The Sense of Belonging: The Most Exploited Human Need of the Twenty-First Century

A case study within the Need Engineering Framework

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You do not really choose. You choose because you are influenced. You choose because you see others choose. You choose because you watch, and you pay attention to the choices of other individuals, and somewhere in that watching, your own will quietly disappears. What is left behind is called a decision. It is not a decision. It is an echo.

This is the argument I want to make, and I want to make it strongly: the sense of belonging is the most exploited human need of the twenty-first century. Not hunger. Not shelter. Not even the need for security, though that one comes close. Belonging. The need to not be alone, to not be excluded, to not be the one standing outside the circle. Every market of influence — every brand, every politician, every government, every organization, even the ones that call themselves spiritual — has learned that if you can control a man's sense of belonging, you do not need to control his mind. His mind will follow on its own.

The mechanism is imitation, not evaluation

Nobody sits down anymore and asks, "Do I need this? Is this true? Is this good for me?" That process has been interrupted. What happens instead is simpler and far more dangerous: a person watches another person choose, and the watching becomes the justification. I see you wear it, so I want it. I see you say it, so I repeat it. I see you living a certain way on a screen, and without knowing it, I have already started auditioning for the same role. This is not choice. This is the dead following the dead — one person with no original reason for what they are doing, followed by another person with no original reason either, and the whole procession calls itself a market, calls itself a culture, calls itself freedom.

Brands built like cults

This is why I say brands have become cult-like structures. People no longer buy products. They buy belonging. The logo is not decoration — it is initiation. The lifestyle attached to the item is the actual thing being purchased; the item itself is just the entry fee. A company does not need to convince you their product works. They only need to convince you that everyone who matters already has it, and that not having it means you are outside. That is not commerce. That is the same architecture religion once used, and tribe before that — except now it is engineered deliberately, by people who have studied exactly which need to press.

Performing for an audience that is not watching

And here is where it becomes almost tragic. People eat nonsense, consume nonsense, and record themselves doing it — not because they are hungry, not because it is good, but to prove something to an audience. And the audience is not watching. Everyone is too busy producing their own proof for their own imagined audience to actually attend to anyone else's. It is a room full of people performing to a crowd that has already left. Consumption has become theater with no spectators, and still the actors keep performing, because stopping would mean admitting no one was ever watching in the first place.

What this has distorted

This has not stayed contained to shopping. It has reached into love — people no longer love, they perform love for validation, and the performance is measured in visibility rather than depth. It has reached into success — success is no longer a private satisfaction, it is a public proof, and if it cannot be shown, some no longer believe it happened. It has reached into wealth — wealth has become less about security and more about signal, worn like a costume for the same absent audience. Belonging, once a human need, has become the control panel for how an entire civilization measures its own worth.

A culture of acting

We have built a culture of acting. Everyone is both actor and audience, and the strange thing is that no one is truly watching, and no one is truly being. The right to choose was decided long before the individual arrived at the moment of choosing — decided by whoever engineered the need beneath it. This is the deepest exploitation of the twenty-first century: not that people are forced, but that they are made to believe they are choosing, while the actual decision was made for them the moment someone else was watched making it first.

The dead following the dead. That is what a market built on manufactured belonging produces. Not community. Not connection. A procession with no one leading it, because everyone in it is only looking at the person just ahead.

I have been thinking about the number of names we have invented for things that, when you remove the fancy language, are actually very simple.

We call it a situationship.

We call it friends with benefits.

We call it soft launching.

We call it hard launching.

We call it breadcrumbing.

We call it orbiting.

We call it ghosting.

We call it benching.

We call it cushioning.

We call it roasting.

We call it the talking stage.

We call it the ick.

We call it love bombing.

We call it future faking.

We call it sneaky linking.

We call it thirst trapping.

We call it cuffing season.

We call it quiet dating.

We call it micro-mance.

We call it rizz.

We call it delulu.

And somehow, after naming all of these things, we have convinced ourselves that we understand them.

I am not sure we do.

I think we have become incredibly sophisticated at naming human behaviour while becoming remarkably incompetent at confronting it.

And perhaps that is what makes the nomenclature interesting.

The name gives the behaviour somewhere to hide.

Because once you give something a fashionable name, it becomes easier to discuss without actually admitting what it is.

You can say, “We’re in a situationship,” instead of saying, “We are sleeping together, emotionally attached to each other, behaving like a couple and refusing to accept the responsibility that comes with being one.”

That sounds less fashionable.

You can say, “He’s my sneaky link,” instead of saying, “There is a person I have sexual access to who I do not intend to acknowledge publicly.”

You can say, “We’re friends with benefits,” instead of saying, “We have decided that our friendship can include sexual access without the obligations we traditionally associate with romantic relationships.”

The terminology makes it sound organised.

Almost respectable.

And I think that is where the problem begins.

Because human beings have always named things.

There is nothing inherently wrong with language evolving. In fact, language must evolve. Every generation creates words for experiences that previous generations did not have words for, particularly when technology changes the way people interact.

So I am not angry that Gen Z invented slang.

That would be intellectually lazy.

My problem is different.

I am interested in what happens when the name becomes more acceptable than the behaviour it describes.

That is what I want to examine.

Because sometimes a new word gives us precision.

And sometimes it gives us permission.

There is a difference.

We Have Become Very Good at Making Ugly Things Sound Comfortable

Consider the word situationship.

It is one of the most fascinating words of modern romance because it describes a relationship that apparently refuses to become a relationship.

There is affection.

There may be sex.

There may be jealousy.

There may be expectations.

There may be emotional dependence.

There may be daily communication.

There may be dates.

There may even be some form of exclusivity.

But there is no agreement about what the relationship actually is.

So we created a word.

Situationship.

It is almost beautiful.

It sounds like a geographical location.

Where are you two?

We’re in a situationship.

No.

You are not in a geographical location.

You are in an undefined relationship.

And sometimes, that ambiguity is mutual and genuinely comfortable. Two adults can decide that they do not want a conventional relationship, and that is their business.

But often, the situationship is not actually an agreement between two people.

It is an avoidance mechanism.

One person wants the intimacy of a relationship without the responsibility of one.

The other person wants the relationship but accepts the ambiguity because they are hoping the situation eventually becomes what they want.

Then six months later, someone is crying because someone else “changed.”

Nobody changed.

The terms were never clear.

But instead of having an uncomfortable conversation at the beginning, we invented a word that allowed everybody to remain comfortable.

That is what interests me.

Friends With Benefits

This one is even more interesting.

Because I genuinely think language has become an accomplice here.

Friends with benefits.

Benefits.

What an interesting word.

We have taken one of the most intimate human acts and turned it into a corporate perk.

You are my friend.

And there are benefits.

What benefits?

Sex.

So what we are really saying is:

We have decided to add sexual access to our friendship while attempting to remove the emotional and relational expectations traditionally associated with sexual intimacy.

And again, two consenting adults can make whatever arrangement they want.

That is not the argument.

The question is what happens when we continually teach ourselves to separate intimacy from responsibility, attachment from commitment, access from accountability, and then wonder why people increasingly struggle to understand what relationships are supposed to be.

We keep creating arrangements where people want the privileges of closeness without accepting the obligations of closeness.

And then we give those arrangements cute names.

The Talking Stage

I find the talking stage fascinating too.

Because apparently we now need a stage to describe talking to somebody.

You met somebody.

You like them.

You are getting to know them.

You are talking.

That used to be called dating.

Now we have apparently created an entire pre-dating economy.

You are not together.

You are not dating.

You are not strangers.

You are talking.

For weeks.

Months.

Sometimes longer.

And everybody knows that something is happening, but nobody wants to say what it is.

This is where I think the modern human has become extremely interesting.

We want certainty without commitment.

We want intimacy without vulnerability.

We want access without accountability.

We want attention without obligation.

And we want options while simultaneously complaining that nobody is serious anymore.

You cannot build certainty while protecting every possible exit.

At some point, somebody has to decide.

Then We Started Launching People

And then romance met marketing.

This is where soft launch and hard launch become particularly funny to me.

We now launch relationships.

A soft launch is when you begin showing evidence that someone exists without completely revealing them.

Perhaps their hand appears in a photograph.

Perhaps their shoulder.

Perhaps two plates at dinner.

Perhaps the back of their head.

Perhaps their shoe.

Perhaps their reflection in a mirror.

The internet begins investigating.

Who is that?

Then eventually comes the hard launch.

There they are.

Face.

Name.

Relationship.

Officially released to the public.

I find the terminology fascinating because it tells us something about what relationships have become.

We have turned human beings into product releases.

You tease.

You build anticipation.

You generate curiosity.

Then you announce.

And I cannot help wondering when the relationship stopped belonging primarily to the two people inside it and became something that had to be introduced to an audience.

This is not necessarily fake.

That distinction is important.

People genuinely love each other and still participate in this culture.

But the language tells us something.

We don’t just have relationships anymore.

We have relationship publicity.

Ghosting

Then there is ghosting.

At least this one is honest.

Someone disappears.

They stop responding.

They stop explaining.

They vanish.

Ghosting is perhaps one of the clearest examples of how technology has changed our ability to avoid human responsibility.

Previous generations could also avoid people.

Of course they could.

But modern technology has made disappearance extraordinarily convenient.

You can see the message.

You can choose not to respond.

You can watch their story.

You can post your own story.

You can be online.

They know you’re online.

You know they know you’re online.

And still, nothing.

The word ghosting gives the behaviour a neat little category.

But what is it really?

Sometimes it is cowardice.

Sometimes it is self-protection.

Sometimes it is a reasonable response to someone who has become unsafe.

And sometimes it is simply an inability to have an uncomfortable conversation.

The word itself does not tell us which one it is.

And that is another problem with nomenclature.

A name describes an event. It does not necessarily explain the morality of the event.

Breadcrumbing

Then somebody invented breadcrumbing.

This is when someone gives you just enough attention to keep you interested without actually intending to build anything substantial.

A message here.

A compliment there.

A reaction to your story.

A “miss you” at midnight.

Then silence.

Then another appearance.

Just enough to keep the person emotionally available.

I think this is one of the few modern terms that actually describes something useful.

But even here, we have to ask a deeper question.

Why are people accepting crumbs?

Because sometimes the problem isn’t only the person giving the breadcrumb.

It is the person who has decided that crumbs are better than leaving the table.

And that is where modern relationship discourse often becomes dishonest.

We spend so much time creating terminology for what other people are doing to us that we rarely create terminology for what we are permitting ourselves to accept.

Perhaps we should.

Orbiting

Then there is orbiting.

Someone disappears from your life but continues watching everything you do.

They don’t speak to you.

They don’t commit.

They don’t participate.

But they watch.

They like.

They react.

They remain somewhere around the perimeter of your digital existence.

It is fascinating.

The person has left your life but refuses to leave your notifications.

And I think this is one of the strangest consequences of social media.

Previous generations could actually disappear.

Now, someone can leave your life while remaining psychologically present every day.

They can know where you went.

Who you are dating.

What you ate.

What your new business is doing.

What your mother posted.

Where you travelled.

Who you are becoming.

Without ever having a meaningful conversation with you.

We have created a strange form of digital haunting.

And then we gave it a name.

Orbiting.

Benching and Cushioning

Then dating became sports.

There is benching.

There is cushioning.

There is roster dating.

There are apparently people you keep around while waiting to see whether your preferred option works out.

This is where I begin to wonder whether modern dating has quietly adopted the logic of a marketplace.

You do not simply meet people.

You maintain inventory.

One person is the starter.

Another is on the bench.

Another is the backup.

Another is the cushion in case the primary relationship collapses.

Another is “just a friend.”

Another is the person you used to date but still keep close.

And somehow everyone is expected to pretend this is emotionally healthy because we have developed vocabulary for it.

I think we have to ask ourselves whether having endless options has actually made us better at choosing.

Perhaps it has made us worse.

When there is always another person available, commitment begins to feel like a loss of options.

And when commitment feels like a loss of options, people begin treating human beings like subscriptions.

Keep this one.

Try that one.

Cancel this one.

Renew that one.

Upgrade.

Downgrade.

Replace.

The Ick

Then came the ick.

A person does something and suddenly you cannot see them the same way again.

Sometimes the ick is legitimate.

Attraction is complicated.

Sometimes something genuinely changes the way you perceive somebody.

But I think the word has also become a convenient way of describing the death of fantasy.

You imagined a person one way.

Then you discovered that they were human.

They chew strangely.

They sweat.

They are awkward.

They have an embarrassing laugh.

They don’t always know what to say.

They have habits.

They have insecurities.

They have ordinary human imperfections.

And suddenly:

“I got the ick.”

Perhaps sometimes you did not get the ick.

Perhaps you encountered a human being outside the carefully edited version you had created in your head.

And this is where social media becomes dangerous.

We have become accustomed to people as presentations.

Perfect photographs.

Perfect bodies.

Perfect captions.

Perfect dates.

Perfect relationships.

Then real life arrives.

Real life has bad lighting.

Real life has arguments.

Real life has morning breath.

Real life has financial problems.

Real life has depression.

Real life has career failure.

Real life has family problems.

Real life has somebody getting sick.

Real life has somebody changing.

Real life has somebody becoming more complicated than the photograph.

And sometimes we call our inability to accommodate reality the ick.

Love Bombing, Future Faking and the Psychology of Instagram

Then psychology entered popular culture.

Suddenly everybody is a narcissist.

Everybody is avoidant.

Everybody is anxious.

Everybody is gaslighting everybody.

Everybody is love bombing.

Everybody is trauma bonded.

Everybody has an attachment style.

Everybody is toxic.

Everybody is a red flag.

And this is where I think we have to slow down.

Some of these concepts are legitimate psychological ideas.

They can help people understand themselves.

They can help people identify patterns.

They can help people leave genuinely harmful relationships.

But the internet has done something strange with psychological language.

It has taken complex concepts and turned them into personality labels.

A person disagrees with you?

Narcissist.

Someone doesn’t text you enough?

Avoidant.

Someone is affectionate?

Love bombing.

Someone says something you don’t like?

Gaslighting.

Someone makes you uncomfortable?

Toxic.

And suddenly, instead of having conversations with people, we diagnose them.

The language gives us the illusion of psychological sophistication without requiring psychological depth.

We have learned the vocabulary of therapy without necessarily learning the discipline of self-examination.

That is dangerous.

Because psychology was supposed to help us understand human beings.

Not give us better insults.

The Red Flag Economy

And then we started seeing red flags everywhere.

Red flag.

Green flag.

Beige flag.

Orange flag.

At this point, I am surprised people don’t walk around with traffic lights attached to their foreheads.

There is value in recognizing patterns of behaviour that should concern us.

Absolutely.

But there is a strange phenomenon happening where people increasingly evaluate potential partners like products undergoing quality assurance.

Does he have this?

Does she do that?

Does he text this way?

Does she post this?

Does he pay?

Does she cook?

Does he have a car?

Does she have a career?

Does he follow women?

Does she have male friends?

Red flag.

Green flag.

Red flag.

Green flag.

We have turned human beings into checklists.

And then we complain that nobody feels human anymore.

Soft Girl. High Value. Low Value. Rizz.

Then the nomenclature escaped relationships and entered identity.

High-value man.

High-value woman.

Low-value man.

Low-value woman.

Soft girl.

Alpha.

Sigma.

Rizz.

High-value dating.

And suddenly human worth became something that could be measured by lifestyle.

What car?

What salary?

What body?

What clothes?

What followers?

What apartment?

What passport?

What partner?

What can you provide?

What can you offer?

What can you do for me?

And this is where my earlier argument about The Table comes back.

We have started confusing human value with market value.

A person is no longer simply desirable because of who they are.

They are desirable because of what they can provide.

Money.

Sex.

Status.

Beauty.

Connections.

Lifestyle.

Attention.

Visibility.

And when the utility declines, so does the perceived value of the person.

That is not love.

That is a marketplace.

And perhaps this is why modern relationships feel increasingly transactional.

We have taught people to ask:

“What do you bring to the table?”

Before asking:

“Who are you?”

The Sexual Marketplace Has Its Own Language

Then there is an entire dictionary for sexual behaviour.

Thirst traps.

Sneaky links.

Body count.

Hookups.

Friends with benefits.

Netflix and chill.

Cuffing season.

Situationships.

No strings attached.

And I think cuffing season might be one of the most revealing.

Apparently, during certain periods of the year, particularly colder months, people suddenly become interested in having somebody around.

Not necessarily because they have discovered love.

Because winter is lonely.

So they find someone.

And we gave the behaviour a season.

This is what I mean when I say we have become extremely good at making human behaviour comfortable through language.

You don’t have to say:

“I’m lonely and I want companionship for a while.”

You can say:

“I’m entering cuffing season.”

Suddenly it sounds like a cultural phenomenon rather than loneliness.

And perhaps that is what many of these words do.

They transform personal discomfort into cultural participation.

Thirst Traps

A thirst trap is another fascinating one.

We now understand that a photograph can be deliberately designed to provoke sexual attention.

Fine.

But look at what happened.

We built an entire social economy around being desired.

Post the body.

Wait for reactions.

Count the comments.

Read the messages.

Watch the views.

Measure the attention.

Then repeat.

And eventually, the person is not merely enjoying their body.

They are monitoring its market performance.

How many people wanted me today?

How many people found me attractive?

How much attention did this photograph generate?

And that takes us directly into one of the things I find most troubling about social media:

the conversion of human desirability into measurable data.

You can now quantify attention.

Likes.

Views.

Shares.

Followers.

Matches.

Comments.

Messages.

We have turned attraction into analytics.

Even Romance Has Become Content

And perhaps this is where all of this finally connects.

Soft launching.

Hard launching.

Couple goals.

Thirst traps.

Situationships.

Talking stages.

Ghosting.

Breadcrumbing.

Orbiting.

Benching.

Cushioning.

Love bombing.

The ick.

Red flags.

High value.

Low value.

Friends with benefits.

Sneaky links.

Cuffing season.

All of these words are different, but they reveal something similar.

We are increasingly experiencing human relationships through categories.

We classify.

We label.

We diagnose.

We announce.

We measure.

We compare.

We document.

We perform.

And eventually, we forget that there are actual human beings underneath the terminology.

There is a woman behind the “body count.”

There is a man behind the “high-value” label.

There is a lonely person behind the “cuffing season.”

There is a confused person behind the “situationship.”

There is an insecure person behind the thirst trap.

There is a frightened person behind the ghosting.

There is an emotionally attached person behind the “friends with benefits.”

There are two human beings behind the “soft launch.”

And perhaps we should occasionally stop naming them long enough to see them.

The Most Dangerous Thing About Nomenclature

I don’t think the danger is slang.

I think the danger is normalisation.

When we repeatedly give language to something, we make it easier to discuss.

When we make it easier to discuss, we make it easier to normalise.

And when something becomes normal, we stop asking whether it is good.

That is the part that concerns me.

Because you can eventually create a society where everybody knows the vocabulary and nobody remembers the original question.

Is this actually good for us?

Is this making us happier?

Are we becoming better people?

Are we building stronger relationships?

Are we becoming more capable of commitment?

Are we becoming more honest?

Are we becoming more responsible with one another?

Are we treating human beings with dignity?

Or have we simply become very good at describing our dysfunction?

That is the question I actually care about.

Because perhaps the problem with our generation is not that we have too many words.

Perhaps it is that we have too few consequences attached to those words.

We call it ghosting.

Okay.

But what does it mean to become a person who cannot have difficult conversations?

We call it a situationship.

Okay.

But what does it mean to repeatedly participate in relationships that you refuse to define?

We call it friends with benefits.

Okay.

But what does it mean to repeatedly separate physical intimacy from emotional responsibility?

We call it soft launching.

Okay.

But what does it mean when your relationship requires an audience before it feels real?

We call it high value.

Okay.

But who decided that human value could be measured by income, appearance, sexual desirability or social status?

We call it the ick.

Okay.

But what happens when your standards are so shaped by fantasy that ordinary humanity begins to disgust you?

These are the conversations I think we are avoiding.

Perhaps We Should Stop Naming Everything

Maybe I am asking for something very simple.

Before we give the next human behaviour a name, perhaps we should first ask what it actually is.

Not what TikTok calls it.

Not what Instagram calls it.

Not what Twitter calls it.

Not what your favourite relationship coach calls it.

What is it?

A person is sleeping with someone they don’t intend to date.

What is that?

Two people are emotionally attached but refuse to define their relationship.

What is that?

Someone keeps another person available as a backup.

What is that?

Someone disappears rather than having an uncomfortable conversation.

What is that?

Someone continually gives another person just enough attention to keep them emotionally available.

What is that?

Someone wants everyone to know they are loved.

What is that?

Someone measures their attractiveness by the amount of attention they receive online.

What is that?

Perhaps sometimes the answer is less fashionable than the terminology.

Perhaps it is loneliness.

Perhaps it is fear.

Perhaps it is insecurity.

Perhaps it is avoidance.

Perhaps it is lust.

Perhaps it is selfishness.

Perhaps it is vanity.

Perhaps it is genuine love.

Perhaps it is confusion.

Perhaps it is simply two people trying to figure out how to be human together.

And maybe that is the point.

Not everything needs a cute name.

Some things need an honest conversation.

Some things need boundaries.

Some things need commitment.

Some things need therapy.

Some things need repentance.

Some things need courage.

Some things need to end.

And some things simply need two people to sit down and admit:

“This is what we are actually doing.”

Because I think that is what we have lost underneath all the nomenclature.

The courage to call things what they are.

We have become so sophisticated in language that sometimes we use language to avoid truth.

And perhaps that is the stupidest nomenclature of all:

giving a beautiful name to something we are too afraid to confront.

If Nobody Applauded Your Relationship, How Would You Know It Was Successful?

I have been thinking about relationships again.

Not love in the abstract. Not the kind of love we write about on Valentine’s Day, or the kind of relationship advice that gets packaged into ten slides and posted on Instagram. I mean the actual thing. The private thing. The thing that exists between two people when nobody else is watching.

And I think we may have introduced a third person into relationships without realizing it.

The audience.

We have allowed an audience to become part of the definition of love.

The relationship is no longer judged entirely by the two people inside it. There is now an invisible third participant sitting somewhere in the room, watching, interpreting, comparing, applauding and sometimes even determining whether the relationship is successful.

This is interesting because relationships were never designed to be performances.

At least, I don’t think they were.

There was a time when a relationship could be deeply meaningful without producing evidence.

Nobody needed to see the flowers.

Nobody needed to know where you went for dinner.

Nobody needed to watch you hold hands.

Nobody needed to know that your partner bought you something.

Nobody needed to see the proposal.

Nobody needed to know that you spent the entire night talking.

Nobody needed to know that you had a difficult conversation and came out of it understanding each other better.

The relationship existed because the people inside it knew that it existed.

That was enough.

Something has changed.

We have slowly introduced an audience into intimacy, and I don’t think we have fully understood what that has done to the way people love.

The average person doesn’t simply experience a relationship anymore.

They experience a relationship and its potential presentation.

They are not only thinking about what happened.

They are thinking about how what happened will look.

And that difference is enormous.

Because the moment you begin thinking about how an intimate experience will appear to other people, you introduce performance into something that was previously allowed to be spontaneous.

You are holding hands, but perhaps you are not holding hands because you particularly want to.

You are holding hands because you are outside and this is what couples do.

You are taking pictures because the date happened, but also because a date that wasn’t photographed almost begins to feel like a date that didn’t happen.

You buy flowers, and before you have even handed them over, there is already an instinct to document them.

You travel together, and somewhere between arriving and leaving, the experience becomes content.

You celebrate your anniversary, but underneath the celebration sits another question.

What will I post?

And I think that question has quietly entered the psychology of modern relationships.

We have developed a form of performative love.

I don’t mean that everybody who posts their relationship is fake. That would be lazy.

Some people genuinely love their partners.

Some people genuinely enjoy sharing their lives.

Some people simply like photographs.

Some people are naturally expressive and public.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that.

The problem begins when being seen loving someone becomes part of what makes the love feel real.

That is where I think we should be concerned.

Because eventually, people stop asking,

“Am I happy with this person?”

and begin asking,

“Does this relationship look successful?”

Those are not the same question.

One is about experience.

The other is about perception.

And social media has made perception extraordinarily powerful.

We now have people evaluating the quality of their private lives through the reactions of people who are not living those lives with them.

Someone posts a photograph.

People respond.

Someone says, “Awww.”

Someone says, “God when?”

Someone says, “Couple goals.”

Someone envies you.

Someone congratulates you.

Someone tells you that you have found a good man.

Someone tells you that you have found a good woman.

And somehow, the relationship has received a public certificate.

Successful.

Approved.

Applauded.

Validated.

But what happens when the applause stops?

What happens when nobody is watching?

What happens when the two of you are sitting in your house on a Tuesday evening, with no makeup, no good lighting, no restaurant, no camera, no audience and no caption?

What is left?

That question interests me.

Because perhaps that is where we discover whether we are actually in a relationship or whether we are participating in a social performance called one.

The Relationship Has Acquired an Audience

I find it fascinating that people can now have relationships with hundreds or thousands of people watching.

Not physically.

Psychologically.

The audience is always there.

The followers are there.

The mutuals are there.

The friends are there.

The people from university are there.

The people you haven’t spoken to in five years are there.

The strangers who somehow know everything about your relationship are there.

And because they are there, you become conscious of them.

You begin constructing the relationship in front of people who were never invited into it.

You are acting for an audience that, in many cases, never asked to watch.

That is the absurdity of it.

You can hide your WhatsApp Status from your own family members while making sure strangers can see the person you are dating.

You can prevent your parents from seeing your photographs while making sure thousands of people online know that your boyfriend bought you flowers.

You can make your relationship private from the people who actually know you and simultaneously make it public to people who couldn’t identify your voice in a crowded room.

And somehow we call this intimacy.

Perhaps it isn’t.

Perhaps it is broadcasting.

There is a difference between sharing your life and performing your life.

The first can be an expression of joy.

The second requires an audience.

And once an audience becomes necessary, the relationship begins to acquire a different set of incentives.

You start doing things that photograph well.

You start celebrating things that can be displayed.

You start measuring romance by things that can be recognized.

You start noticing the relationships that receive the most applause.

And slowly, without announcing it, you begin comparing your private reality to somebody else’s public performance.

That is where things become particularly dangerous.

Because you are comparing what you know about your relationship with what somebody else has chosen to show you about theirs.

You know your arguments.

You know your insecurities.

You know your disappointments.

You know the things your partner does that annoy you.

You know the nights when neither of you wants to talk.

You know the financial pressures.

You know the disagreements.

You know the uncomfortable conversations.

But you look at somebody else’s relationship online and see the dinner, the flowers, the vacation, the birthday surprise and the perfectly edited video.

Then you look at your own relationship and wonder whether something is wrong.

Perhaps nothing is wrong.

Perhaps you have simply compared a life to a presentation.

We Have Been Taught What Love Is Supposed to Look Like

This is the part that interests me most.

I don’t think people are simply showing off.

I think many people have been educated into a visual definition of love.

They have consumed so much romantic content that a template has been created in their minds.

Love looks like flowers.

Love looks like surprise dates.

Love looks like expensive dinners.

Love looks like matching clothes.

Love looks like vacation photographs.

Love looks like public declarations.

Love looks like your partner posting you.

Love looks like being hard-launched.

Love looks like being soft-launched.

Love looks like birthday paragraphs.

Love looks like a man buying something expensive.

Love looks like a woman being publicly claimed.

Love looks like photographs taken from the passenger seat.

Love looks like somebody opening a car door.

Love looks like a proposal filmed from six different angles.

And because these images are repeated thousands of times, they stop looking like examples of love and begin looking like the definition of love.

That is a very different thing.

So someone may actually be loved and still feel unloved.

Not because they are not receiving love.

But because the love they are receiving doesn’t resemble the love they were taught to recognize.

That is a psychological problem.

If I have been taught that love looks like public affection, private affection may begin to feel inadequate.

If I have been taught that love looks like gifts, sacrifice may become invisible.

If I have been taught that love looks like photographs, ordinary companionship may feel insignificant.

If I have been taught that love looks expensive, someone quietly investing in my development may not register as love at all.

And this is where I think about Glorified Intentionality & Emptiness.

We have become incredibly good at producing the symbols of love.

I am not convinced we are becoming equally good at producing the substance.

We know how to make somebody feel special for a photograph.

I am not sure we know how to make somebody’s life better.

We know how to create a memorable birthday.

I am not sure we know how to help somebody become a better human being.

We know how to plan a surprise.

I am not sure we know how to sit through somebody’s difficult season.

We know how to say “I love you.”

I am not sure we know how to sacrifice when loving somebody becomes inconvenient.

And perhaps this is one of the great contradictions of modern romance.

We are becoming better at demonstrating love and worse at sustaining it.

The Need to Be Seen

I think people want to show that they are loved because being loved has become a social status.

This is not entirely new.

Human beings have always cared about status.

But social media has given status a visual language that is available every day.

Your relationship can now become part of your personal brand.

Your partner becomes evidence.

Evidence that somebody chose you.

Evidence that somebody desires you.

Evidence that somebody can afford you.

Evidence that you are attractive enough to be loved.

Evidence that you are living a certain kind of life.

Evidence that you have “made it.”

And this is where romance begins to intersect with identity.

You are no longer simply asking whether you love this person.

You are also asking what this person says about you.

Does this person make me look successful?

Does this person make me look desirable?

Does this person make me look financially secure?

Does this person make me look wanted?

Does this relationship fit the life I want people to believe I have?

And when relationships become identity projects, the partner can slowly stop being a human being and become a symbol.

A boyfriend becomes proof.

A girlfriend becomes proof.

A proposal becomes proof.

A wedding becomes proof.

A vacation becomes proof.

The photograph becomes proof.

And the applause becomes confirmation.

But confirmation of what?

That you are loved?

Or that you have successfully constructed the appearance of being loved?

There is a difference.

The Validation Virus

I think there is a validation virus running through modern relationships.

People want to know that other people know they are loved.

And that is different from simply being loved.

There is a psychological reward attached to public confirmation.

You post.

People respond.

The notifications arrive.

The comments come.

The hearts appear.

Someone says, “This is beautiful.”

Someone says, “God when?”

Someone says, “May I never experience what you are experiencing.”

Someone sends it to another person.

Someone screenshots it.

Someone talks about it.

And for a moment, the relationship becomes socially real.

The audience has applauded.

And perhaps that is why some people become uncomfortable when their partners stop posting them.

It isn’t always about the post.

It is about what the absence of the post appears to communicate.

Why don’t you show me anymore?

Why don’t you post me anymore?

Why are you hiding me?

Why don’t you celebrate me publicly?

Sometimes these questions are legitimate.

There are relationships where secrecy is genuinely a problem.

But there are also situations where a person has unconsciously made public recognition a requirement for private security.

That is something else.

Because if external validation becomes the metric by which you evaluate internal reality, you eventually become dependent on the audience to tell you how you feel.

And that is a terrible way to live.

You should be able to have a wonderful relationship that nobody knows about.

You should be able to love someone without needing strangers to certify the love.

You should be able to have a beautiful evening that produces no photograph.

You should be able to receive a gift that never appears online.

You should be able to have a conversation that remains entirely between two people.

You should be able to celebrate without documenting.

You should be able to experience something without converting it into evidence.

Because not everything meaningful needs witnesses.

The Death of Spontaneity

And perhaps this is what we have lost most severely.

Spontaneity.

There was something beautiful about doing things simply because you felt like doing them.

You saw something.

You thought about somebody.

You bought it.

You gave it to them.

Finished.

No camera.

No caption.

No announcement.

No strategic timing.

No expectation that somebody would react.

Just two people experiencing something.

I think there was a kind of innocence in that.

You could walk past something and think, “She would like this.”

You could buy it.

You could get home.

You could give it to her.

And the moment could belong entirely to the two of you.

Now, before the moment has even happened, there is sometimes another consciousness in the room.

The camera.

The audience.

The story.

The post.

The memory of what other people have done.

The expectation of what a relationship is supposed to look like.

And so the experience becomes partly performative.

You are no longer just having the experience.

You are producing evidence that you had it.

That is a subtle but profound change.

Because the camera does not only record experiences.

Sometimes, it changes the way we experience them.

You begin looking at your own life from the perspective of a spectator.

You are living, but you are also watching yourself live.

And I think relationships suffer greatly under that kind of consciousness.

Because love needs room to be ridiculous.

It needs room to be ordinary.

It needs room to be ugly.

It needs room to be quiet.

It needs room for two people to do things that would make absolutely no sense to anybody else.

That is part of intimacy.

You don’t need an audience for the private language of two people.

In fact, perhaps the fact that nobody else understands it is part of what makes it intimate.

So What Is the Metric?

This is where I keep returning.

If nobody applauded your relationship, how would you know it was successful?

Not because posting your relationship is inherently wrong.

It isn’t.

I don’t think privacy automatically makes a relationship healthy, and I don’t think publicity automatically makes it fake.

That would be another simplistic argument.

My concern is much more fundamental.

What is your metric?

How do you know you are loved?

How do you know you are happy?

How do you know the relationship is growing?

How do you know the person beside you is making your life better?

Is it because people online think you look good together?

Is it because somebody commented “couple goals”?

Is it because your partner posts you every Friday?

Is it because your friends envy the relationship?

Or do you know because the two of you have actually become different people since you met?

Are you more disciplined?

More peaceful?

More courageous?

More intellectually alive?

More financially responsible?

More emotionally mature?

More capable of sacrifice?

More capable of forgiveness?

More capable of building?

More capable of becoming?

Because perhaps the success of a relationship should be measured by what happens to the humans inside it, not by what the audience thinks of the relationship.

Perhaps a successful relationship is not necessarily the one that looks the most romantic.

Perhaps it is the one in which two people are actually becoming more complete human beings.

Perhaps it is the relationship where you can look back after five years and say:

I am not the person I was when I met you.

And neither are you.

We have built something.

We have learned something.

We have survived something.

We have become something.

That, to me, sounds much more like love than a photograph ever could.

Because a photograph can prove that you went somewhere.

It cannot prove that you grew there.

A gift can prove that somebody bought something for you.

It cannot prove that they understand you.

A public declaration can prove that somebody said they love you.

It cannot prove that they know how to love you.

A wedding can prove that two people got married.

It cannot prove that they know how to remain married.

An anniversary post can prove that you have been together for five years.

It cannot prove that you have spent those five years becoming better people.

And perhaps that is the emptiness we should be examining.

We have become obsessed with evidence of love while neglecting the effects of love.

What has your relationship produced in you?

Who have you become because of this person?

What has changed?

What have you learned?

What have you built?

What have you healed?

What have you sacrificed?

What have you become capable of?

Those questions don’t photograph very well.

But perhaps they are the questions that matter.

Back to the Two People

Maybe we need to take something back from the audience.

Not necessarily our relationships.

Our definition of them.

Because the audience should not have the authority to determine whether your relationship is successful.

The comments should not determine it.

The likes should not determine it.

The applause should not determine it.

The envy of your friends should not determine it.

The admiration of strangers should not determine it.

And neither should the absence of those things.

There is something profoundly liberating about realizing that your relationship does not have to make sense to everybody else.

It does not have to look impressive.

It does not have to compete.

It does not have to produce content.

It does not have to become somebody else’s inspiration.

It only has to be real.

Perhaps the healthiest relationship is the one that can survive the removal of its audience.

Remove the photographs.

Remove the captions.

Remove the comments.

Remove the applause.

Remove the social validation.

Remove the pressure to prove anything.

Then ask two people to sit across from each other.

Do you still want each other?

Do you still enjoy each other’s company?

Do you still respect each other?

Do you still make each other better?

Do you still want to build?

Do you still want to become?

Do you still find joy in the ordinary things?

Can you sit in silence?

Can you disagree?

Can you sacrifice?

Can you forgive?

Can you laugh when nobody is recording?

Can you love each other when there is absolutely nothing to show?

Because when the audience disappears, we may finally discover what remains.

And perhaps that is the real test.

Not whether people applaud your relationship.

But whether you would still choose it if nobody ever did.

That is where I think we need to return.

Away from the performance.

Away from the comparison.

Away from the applause.

Away from the endless production of evidence.

Back to the two people.

Because a relationship that requires an audience to feel real has already surrendered something very important.

It has surrendered the authority to define itself.

And perhaps the most radical form of love in the twenty-first century is not hiding your relationship.

It is being completely capable of enjoying it without needing anyone else to know it happened.

Because at the end of the day, the audience goes home.

The applause stops.

The screen goes dark.

The notifications disappear.

And there are still two people sitting in the room.

What happens then?

The Table

Function, Servicing & Unconscious Retainership

There is a question that has become almost impossible to escape in modern relationships.

What do you bring to the table?

It sounds reasonable.

It sounds mature.

It sounds like something an emotionally intelligent adult should ask before entering a relationship.

But I have been thinking about the question itself.

What exactly are we asking when we ask another human what they bring to the table?

Because sometimes I don’t hear:

“Who are you?”

I hear:

“What do you have?”

And those are two very different questions.

The first is interested in the person.

The second is interested in the inventory.

Perhaps that is where something has quietly changed in the way we understand relationships.

We have taken a language that belongs naturally to negotiation and commerce and brought it into intimacy.

When two parties sit at a table to end a war, they bring things to the table.

They negotiate.

They exchange.

They make concessions.

They determine what each side is willing to give and what each side expects to receive.

The table is, fundamentally, a place of negotiation.

So when we make “what do you bring to the table?” the premise upon which romantic relationships are evaluated, what exactly have we done to love?

We have introduced the language of exchange into a relationship that we claim is built on affection.

And perhaps we don’t even notice it anymore because the language has become normal.

What do you bring?

What do you add?

What value do you provide?

What can you do for me?

What are you offering?

What am I getting from this relationship?

These questions sound perfectly ordinary now.

But if we keep following the logic, we eventually arrive somewhere uncomfortable.

If what you bring to the table determines whether I love you, then what happens when you stop bringing it?

If your usefulness is the reason I retain you, what happens when you become less useful?

If your beauty attracted me and your beauty changes, does my love change?

If your money attracted me and your money disappears, does my love disappear?

If your connections gave me access and you lose those connections, what happens?

If your body gave me sexual gratification and that changes, what happens?

If your emotional availability made my life easier and you eventually become unavailable because you are struggling with your own life, what happens?

If you were always the person who fixed my problems and one day you become exhausted from fixing them, what happens?

This is where I think the idea of function becomes important.

Because humans perform functions in one another’s lives.

Sometimes consciously.

Often unconsciously.

One person becomes the provider.

Another becomes the emotional caretaker.

Another becomes the person who always has the connections.

Another becomes the person who pays for everything.

Another becomes the person who provides sex.

Another becomes the person who listens.

Another becomes the person who fixes things.

Another becomes the person who constantly reassures.

Another becomes the person who introduces opportunities.

Another becomes the person who gives someone status.

Another becomes the person who makes another person feel beautiful.

Another becomes the person who absorbs another person’s chaos.

And because the function is continuously performed, we begin to associate the person with the function.

We stop seeing the human independently from what they provide.

That is where unconscious retainership begins.

You may not consciously think:

“I am keeping this person because of the service they provide.”

You may genuinely believe:

“I love this person.”

But perhaps part of what you love is what their presence does to your life.

And those two things are not always the same.

This is not an accusation against human relationships.

People naturally contribute to one another.

That is part of what makes relationships beautiful.

We should care for one another.

We should help one another.

We should provide for one another.

We should sacrifice.

We should support.

The problem begins when the contribution becomes the condition for affection.

Because then love becomes conditional upon performance.

You are loved while you function.

You are retained while you provide.

You are celebrated while you remain useful.

And once the function begins to disappear, the relationship begins to develop problems.

Suddenly, the person has “changed.”

Suddenly, they are “no longer intentional.”

Suddenly, the relationship is “not working.”

Suddenly, there is a “lack of effort.”

Sometimes that is true.

People genuinely change.

People become incompatible.

People grow apart.

People stop communicating.

People can become abusive or destructive.

Not every relationship should survive every change.

But I think there is another phenomenon that we don’t discuss enough.

Sometimes the person has not stopped being lovable.

They have simply stopped servicing the function for which they were unconsciously retained.

That is a very different problem.

Consider the person who spends years trying to fix a toxic partner.

They become the therapist.

The rescuer.

The negotiator.

The person who keeps apologizing.

The person who keeps understanding.

The person who keeps giving another chance.

Eventually, that person becomes tired.

They stop fixing.

They stop absorbing the chaos.

They stop making excuses.

And suddenly the other person says:

“You’ve changed.”

Perhaps they have.

But perhaps what actually happened is that the service stopped.

The relationship had quietly been organized around a function.

One person was the problem.

The other person was the solution.

And when the solution stopped working, the relationship began to collapse.

This is why I find the modern language of situationships interesting.

Gen Z has become exceptionally good at naming relational arrangements.

Situationship.

Talking stage.

Friends with benefits.

Sneaky link.

Soft launch.

Hard launch.

Exclusive.

Non-exclusive.

And there is something useful about giving names to experiences.

Language helps us identify patterns.

But sometimes I wonder if we are simply becoming better at naming the symptoms of a deeper problem.

We can identify the arrangement.

We can identify the status.

We can identify what the relationship is called.

But do we understand what we are actually doing to one another?

Because two people can enter a relationship with completely different assumptions about its function.

One person thinks:

“I am here because I love you.”

The other thinks:

“I am here because you provide something I need.”

Both people may call it love.

That is where confusion begins.

And perhaps this explains some of the strange breakups we see.

The relationship appears to be going well until the function changes.

The man loses his job.

The woman becomes less emotionally available.

The sex changes.

Someone’s beauty changes.

A business fails.

A person loses social status.

A person stops paying for everything.

A person stops providing constant reassurance.

A person develops a new ambition that requires more of their time.

And suddenly the relationship begins to deteriorate.

Sometimes the problem is presented as incompatibility.

Sometimes it is called loss of attraction.

Sometimes it is “I just don’t feel the same anymore.”

Sometimes it is simply:

“You are no longer giving me what you used to.”

And perhaps that sentence is more honest than we realize.

Because there is a difference between loving a person and loving what the person provides.

The two can coexist.

But they should not be confused.

This is where I disagree with the increasingly popular idea that romantic relationships should primarily be evaluated by value addition.

“Does this person add value to your life?”

It sounds intelligent.

It sounds sophisticated.

But what does it mean?

Does my mother add value to my life?

Does my brother add value to my life?

Does my oldest friend add value to my life?

We don’t usually speak about these relationships primarily in terms of value addition.

Why?

Because we intuitively understand that human relationships are not merely economic exchanges.

Yet when romance enters the conversation, we suddenly start speaking like procurement officers.

What is the specification?

What is the return?

What is the benefit?

What is the cost?

What is the opportunity cost?

What are you bringing?

What are you offering?

What am I getting?

And perhaps this is where modern romance has become confused.

We have taken discernment, which is necessary, and turned it into consumer evaluation.

There is nothing wrong with knowing what you want.

There is nothing wrong with having standards.

There is nothing wrong with deciding that somebody is not compatible with your life.

There is nothing wrong with leaving a relationship that is destroying you.

But there is something strange about evaluating a human being primarily by their utility.

Because humans are not products.

And love is not a procurement exercise.

At least it shouldn’t be.

This is also where the phrase “high-value” becomes interesting.

High-value man.

High-value woman.

Low-value man.

Low-value woman.

What exactly is being valued?

Character?

Wisdom?

Integrity?

Compassion?

Discipline?

Or market desirability?

Because if beauty increases your value, what happens when beauty changes?

If money increases your value, what happens when money disappears?

If status increases your value, what happens when the status is gone?

If sexual availability increases your value, what happens when you no longer want to provide it?

If your ability to solve someone’s problems increases your value, what happens when you finally decide to solve your own?

At some point, the language of value begins to reveal its problem.

Value is contextual.

A thing is valuable because of what it does within a particular system.

And that is exactly what makes the language dangerous when applied carelessly to humans.

If your value is determined by the function you perform for me, then your value disappears when your function disappears.

That is not love.

That is utility.

And perhaps this is why I keep returning to the idea that love has lost some of its definition.

Love, in its most basic form, is an affection toward a person.

But we have surrounded that affection with conditions.

I love you if you provide.

I love you if you remain attractive.

I love you if you make me happy.

I love you if you give me peace.

I love you if you pay my bills.

I love you if you satisfy me sexually.

I love you if you fit my lifestyle.

I love you if you make me look successful.

I love you if you make my life convenient.

At some point, what we call love becomes a list of requirements.

And I think we should be careful.

Because unconditional love does not mean unconditional access.

You can love someone and leave.

You can love someone and establish boundaries.

You can love someone and refuse their behavior.

You can love someone and decide that proximity to them is destructive.

Love does not require self-destruction.

But neither should love be reduced to:

“What are you doing for me?”

There is sacrifice in love.

There is compromise.

There is inconvenience.

There are seasons when one person carries more than the other.

There are seasons when one person is weak.

There are seasons when one person has nothing particularly impressive to bring to the table.

And perhaps that is when we discover whether we actually loved the person or merely loved the arrangement.

Because it is easy to love somebody while they are useful to you.

The difficult question is whether you can continue to regard them as human when they become inconvenient.

This is where I think social media has complicated everything.

People are no longer only comparing relationships.

They are comparing lifestyles.

You see someone’s boyfriend buying a car.

Someone else’s girlfriend travelling to Dubai.

Someone else’s husband paying for a house.

Someone else’s partner sending flowers every Friday.

Someone else’s relationship filled with expensive dinners and beautiful hotels.

And suddenly your relationship becomes inadequate because it does not resemble something you saw on a screen.

You are no longer dating only the human in front of you.

You are dating the possibility of an Instagram story.

You are dating the TikTok version of romance.

You are dating an aesthetic.

You are dating a lifestyle.

You are dating what the relationship allows you to communicate about yourself.

And this creates something almost absurd.

Millions of people are trying to impress people who do not know they exist.

Everyone is running a race that nobody officially announced.

Everybody is trying to demonstrate that they are loved.

That they are successful.

That they have a desirable partner.

That their partner is generous.

That their relationship is better.

That their life is moving.

And the people they are trying to impress may scroll past the post in three seconds.

We have created a competition with no referee.

A race with no finish line.

And people are bringing that competition into their relationships.

So now someone isn’t simply asking:

“Do I love this person?”

They are asking:

“Does this person provide the kind of relationship that I can be proud to display?”

That is a different kind of desire.

And it is deeply connected to unconscious retainership.

Because sometimes we don’t retain people because we love them.

We retain them because they continue to perform a function in the story we are telling about ourselves.

The beautiful partner.

The successful partner.

The connected partner.

The provider.

The fixer.

The person who gives us access.

The person who makes us feel wanted.

The person who makes us look wanted.

And when the function stops, we begin to reconsider the human.

Perhaps that is one of the quietest forms of objectification.

Not reducing someone to their body.

Not reducing someone to sex.

But reducing someone to what they do for us.

A person can be objectified by their usefulness just as easily as they can be objectified by their body.

And that is the uncomfortable part.

We talk constantly about sexual objectification.

Perhaps we should also talk about functional objectification.

The person who is loved because they provide money.

The person who is loved because they provide sex.

The person who is loved because they provide emotional regulation.

The person who is loved because they provide status.

The person who is loved because they provide connections.

The person who is loved because they provide peace.

The person who is loved because they solve problems.

They are still being reduced.

The object has simply become more sophisticated.

So perhaps the question is not:

“What do you bring to the table?”

Perhaps the better question is:

“Who are you, and who are we becoming together?”

Those questions don’t eliminate standards.

They don’t eliminate discernment.

They don’t eliminate responsibility.

They simply refuse to reduce the human being to an inventory of benefits.

Because eventually, every function changes.

Beauty changes.

Money changes.

Sex changes.

Careers change.

Bodies change.

Ambitions change.

Health changes.

Circumstances change.

If love is built entirely around function, then love is only as durable as the function.

But if love is actually directed toward the person, then the relationship has a chance to survive the changing functions.

That, to me, is the difference between loving what someone provides and loving someone who provides.

One is consumption.

The other is relationship.

And perhaps the greatest question we should ask ourselves is not what another human brings to our table.

It is whether we have quietly turned the person sitting across from us into part of the furniture.

Because if I only notice you when you are serving me, I may have never really noticed you at all.

I think I was six or seven years old when I was first introduced to something I would eventually spend years trying to understand.

At the time, I didn’t know it was an introduction.

I didn’t know I was being introduced to anything.

I was simply a child spending holidays with my grandparents.

Those holidays were familiar to me. I would go there with my aunties, spend time with my grandparents, sleep in the house with everybody else, wake up around familiar voices and move through the day in the ordinary way children do when they are surrounded by adults they trust. There was a certain looseness to the environment. People were family. People were comfortable. There was not always a strong distinction between what belonged to adults and what belonged to children.

And I think that distinction matters.

Because children are constantly learning from environments that adults have stopped noticing.

There was one particular thing I remember.

One of my aunties would sometimes take off her clothes around the house and wash her underwear while we were there. She would wash them and leave them to dry in places where everybody could see them. Sometimes her friends would come around and do similar things. They would take off their clothes, wash their underwear, and leave them around the house as though there was absolutely nothing unusual about it.

I remember the underwear.

I remember the colours.

I remember the different designs.

I remember the fact that there were so many of them that they eventually became part of the visual environment of the house.

At the time, I didn’t have the vocabulary to describe what I was seeing.

I didn’t understand sexuality.

I didn’t understand sexual privacy.

I didn’t understand why some parts of the human body were treated differently from others.

I didn’t understand what underwear represented.

I didn’t even have the intellectual framework to ask the questions that an adult might ask about privacy, modesty or boundaries.

I simply saw it.

And perhaps this is one of the things adults underestimate about children: the absence of understanding does not mean the absence of memory.

A child may not know what something means and still remember exactly what it looked like.

A child may not understand why something is happening and still form an association around it.

A child may not have the words to describe an experience and still carry the experience into adulthood.

Looking back now, I understand that I was living in an environment where certain things that should have been private were being presented to me as ordinary.

I am not saying my aunt intended to teach me about sex.

I don’t believe that was the intention at all.

That is actually what makes the memory interesting to me.

There was no deliberate lesson.

There was no conversation.

There was no adult saying, “This is what sex is.”

There was simply exposure.

And exposure can become education when the person being exposed does not have another source of information.

I think that is what happened to me.

My mind was collecting things before I understood what it was collecting.

I was seeing adult bodies.

I was seeing intimate clothing.

I was seeing the casualness with which adults treated things that, much later, I would understand to be connected to sexuality and privacy.

And because nobody explained any of it to me, my mind had to create its own interpretation.

That is how children learn many things.

They observe first.

They interpret later.

Sometimes the interpretation is correct.

Sometimes it is completely wrong.

But once an association is established, removing it is not always as easy as telling the child, years later, “That isn’t what it means.”

The strange thing about childhood is that the mind doesn’t wait for permission to make meaning.

It takes fragments.

A picture.

A sound.

A conversation overheard from another room.

Something somebody says.

Something somebody does.

A body.

A piece of clothing.

A television scene.

A photograph.

A phone.

And it begins putting these things together.

At six or seven, I didn’t know that I was forming an understanding of sexuality.

But I was.

I simply didn’t know that was what was happening.

Years later, I encountered pornography for the first time.

And this experience was different.

It happened through a neighbour’s phone.

The neighbour had come to plug the phone at our house. I don’t remember the exact circumstances anymore, but at some point I had access to the phone and I was looking through it.

Children are curious.

Especially about things they don’t understand.

And then I saw pornography.

I remember that because it was one of those moments where something previously undefined suddenly acquired a form.

Before that, I had fragments.

After that, I had images.

And I think that distinction is important.

The pornography didn’t necessarily create my curiosity.

It gave my curiosity a language.

It showed me something I had never been old enough to properly understand, and because I was young, I did not have the tools to critically examine what I was seeing.

I didn’t know the difference between sex and the performance of sex.

I didn’t know the difference between intimacy and sexual entertainment.

I didn’t know that pornography is produced for an audience.

I didn’t understand that bodies could be selected, presented, staged and performed.

I didn’t understand that what happens in front of a camera can be completely different from what happens between two human beings who actually love, trust and know each other.

I didn’t know any of that.

I saw it.

And because I saw it before I had any meaningful understanding of sex, it became one of the earliest references I had for what sex was supposed to be.

That is what concerns me when I think about children encountering pornography.

It isn’t merely that they see naked bodies.

It is that they can encounter an entire philosophy of sex before they have developed the capacity to question it.

Pornography can teach a child what it thinks desire looks like.

It can teach a child what it thinks a desirable body looks like.

It can teach a child what it thinks sexual behaviour should look like.

It can teach a child what it thinks men want.

It can teach a child what it thinks women want.

And the child may not know that they are being taught.

They may simply think they have discovered something.

That is what happened to me.

I didn’t sit there and think, “This is going to influence my understanding of sex.”

I was a child.

I saw something.

And something stayed.

That is the part of this story that I have become more interested in as I have grown older.

How much of what I eventually believed about sex was actually mine?

How much of it was something I had learned?

How much of it came from pornography?

How much came from things I saw as a child?

How much came from conversations?

How much came from other people’s experiences?

How much came from the internet?

And how much of what I eventually considered normal was simply something I had encountered repeatedly?

Because repetition has a strange relationship with truth.

Something can be completely foreign to you the first time you see it.

Then familiar the tenth time.

Then normal the hundredth time.

Eventually, you stop asking where the idea came from.

You simply live according to it.

That is why I call this a false knowledge of sex.

I had knowledge, but I did not necessarily have understanding.

I knew what certain things looked like.

I did not necessarily understand what they meant.

I knew what bodies looked like.

I did not understand intimacy.

I knew what sexual behaviour could look like.

I did not understand the emotional, psychological or relational reality surrounding it.

I knew what was presented as desirable.

I did not understand the difference between desire and connection.

There is a dangerous gap between knowing what something looks like and knowing what something is.

And I think pornography filled that gap for me before I had the opportunity to fill it with something healthier.

That does not mean I blame one person.

I don’t.

It is more complicated than that.

There was the environment.

There was childhood curiosity.

There was access to technology.

There were other people.

There was the internet.

There was the absence of certain conversations.

There was my own curiosity.

There were many things that eventually became part of the story.

But when I look backward, I can see that the story began much earlier than I originally thought.

It did not begin with the first pornographic video I saw.

It began with the accumulation of images and experiences that taught me that certain things were ordinary before I understood why they were significant.

And then pornography came along and gave those fragments a framework.

That is what I want to explore throughout this series.

Not simply pornography itself.

But how a human being learns sex.

Where does the knowledge come from?

Who teaches us?

What happens when children encounter information before they are emotionally or intellectually prepared for it?

What happens when pornography becomes one of the first teachers?

What happens when the first things we learn about sex come from people who are performing it for an audience rather than people who are teaching us what intimacy actually means?

I don’t think I have all the answers.

In fact, part of the reason I am writing this is because I am still examining my own answers.

I am looking backward at a younger version of myself and asking questions I was incapable of asking then.

And perhaps that is what makes this uncomfortable.

Because when I look back, I don’t just see a child who eventually encountered pornography.

I see a child who was slowly collecting information about the adult world without knowing that he was collecting it.

And I wonder how many other children are doing the same thing right now.

Children who are watching.

Children who are listening.

Children who are borrowing phones.

Children who are finding things they were never supposed to find.

Children who are seeing adults behave in ways they don’t understand.

Children who will eventually grow into adults carrying beliefs about sex that they cannot remember learning.

That is why I want to tell this story slowly.

There are twelve episodes.

This is only the first.

I am not trying to conclude anything yet.

I am trying to trace the beginning.

Tomorrow, I will tell you about the second experience.

And perhaps, as I continue telling the story, I will understand something about myself that I did not understand when I was six or seven.

For now, this is what I know:

Sometimes the things that introduce us to a subject are not the things that teach us the truth about it.

And sometimes it takes adulthood to realize that what you thought you knew was something you were taught long before you were old enough to question it.

I have been thinking about love recently, and I think we may have misunderstood what intentionality means.

Or perhaps social media has slowly taught us to understand it differently.

The average human now has a template for love.

You buy gifts.

You go on dates.

You post each other.

You take pictures.

You have sex.

You surprise each other.

You write long birthday messages.

You make videos.

You travel together.

You do all of these things and call it intentionality.

And I am not saying any of these things are bad. They are not.

But I have started asking myself a different question.

What exactly are we building?

Because I have seen relationships where two people have been together for three, four, five years and, when you remove the pictures, the gifts, the sex, the dates, the trips and all the things they have consumed together, there is almost nothing left.

They are still the exact same two people who met.

Same ambitions.

Same problems.

Same financial position.

Same habits.

Same intellectual capacity.

Same fears.

Same lack of direction.

They simply have more memories together.

And we call that growth because the relationship has lasted.

I don’t know.

I think there is something wrong with that.

I have been called “Bob the Builder” before, and honestly, I understand why.

When I care about someone, my natural instinct is to build.

I want to help you build something.

A business.

A brand.

A career.

A system.

An idea.

I want to introduce you to somebody.

I want to help you solve the problem you have been complaining about for six months.

I want to send you a book.

I want to show you something.

I want to help you understand something.

I want to see your horizon become larger than it was when I met you.

That is how I naturally express love.

And I have realized that perhaps this is not how everybody expresses love.

Humans are different.

Some people naturally communicate.

Some people naturally nurture.

Some people naturally give.

Some people naturally protect.

Some people naturally serve.

Some people naturally build.

And perhaps the things that come naturally to us also influence how we understand love.

The problem begins when we assume that everybody must express love in the same language.

So someone may genuinely be trying to love you, but because their expression does not look like the version you learned from Instagram, TikTok or whatever social media platform you grew up consuming, you conclude that they don’t love you.

And this is where I think the 21st century has done something interesting to love.

It has made love increasingly performative.

We now have an audience.

There is a public.

There are metrics.

There are likes.

There are comments.

There are people watching.

So love is no longer simply about what happens between two people.

Sometimes it is about what the relationship looks like to everybody else.

He bought me this.

She took me here.

He posted me.

She surprised me.

He gave me flowers.

She got me an iPhone.

And because everybody can see it, everybody can validate it.

We have started confusing visibility with intentionality.

That concerns me.

Because there are things that look like love but do absolutely nothing for the person receiving them.

You can buy me an expensive gift and still not care about my future.

You can sleep with me every night and still not know what I am becoming.

You can post me every week and still have no interest in my mind.

You can take me on ten dates and never help me become more capable.

You can love the version of me that gives you gratification and have absolutely no interest in the version of me that is trying to emerge.

That is not necessarily love.

Sometimes it is simply consumption.

And I think this is where we need to redefine intentionality.

Intentionality should not only mean that you thought about what gift to buy me.

It should also mean that you have thought about me.

Not just what makes me happy today.

What makes my life better?

What am I trying to become?

Where am I struggling?

Where am I weak?

What do I want to learn?

What am I afraid of?

What am I building?

And how can I participate in that?

Imagine telling your partner:

“I noticed that you struggle with this. I bought you this book. Read it and let’s talk about it later.”

Imagine saying:

“I know you want to change careers. Let’s sit down and figure out what that would require.”

Imagine:

“I know you want to build a business. Let me help you think through it.”

Or even:

“You are doing this thing that is going to destroy what you say you want. I love you enough to tell you.”

That is intentionality too.

It may not be romantic in the way social media has taught us to understand romance.

It may not get 20,000 likes.

Nobody may repost it.

There may be no TikTok sound for it.

But perhaps that is the problem.

We have begun measuring love by things that are easy to display rather than things that are difficult to prove.

And development is difficult to display.

Growth is slow.

Character is slow.

Financial stability is slow.

Building a career is slow.

Learning is slow.

Becoming a better human is slow.

You cannot always take a picture of it.

So we gravitate towards things that can be photographed.

The dinner.

The flowers.

The hotel.

The trip.

The gift.

The ring.

The body.

The sex.

The screenshot.

The relationship becomes a collection of visible experiences.

But what happens when the experience ends?

What did you actually build?

This is where I think many relationships have become consumption without construction.

You consume food together.

You consume entertainment together.

You consume sex together.

You consume experiences together.

You consume holidays together.

You consume each other’s bodies.

And then you wake up five years later and realize that you have built almost nothing.

You have simply become very good at consuming together.

I don’t think that is what love should be.

And I am not saying that every relationship needs to become a business partnership.

That would be ridiculous.

Sometimes love is simply sitting down together.

Sometimes it is laughing.

Sometimes it is sex.

Sometimes it is travelling.

Sometimes it is buying someone flowers for no reason.

There is nothing wrong with pleasure.

The problem is when pleasure becomes the entire architecture of the relationship.

Because the things that gratify us change.

Trends change.

Technology changes.

Social media changes.

What people consider romantic changes.

At one point, romance may have been sitting under an iroko tree for hours talking.

Then it became writing letters.

Then telephone calls.

Then taxi rides.

Then buying clothes.

Then dinner.

Then Instagram pictures.

Then TikTok videos.

The objects change.

The platforms change.

The rituals change.

But there is supposed to be something underneath all of them that remains.

Intentionality.

I want to know that the person beside me actually wants to see me become.

Not become what they want me to become.

Become who I am capable of becoming.

There is a difference.

Because I can also use “growth” as an excuse to control you.

I can say I am trying to make you better when what I really mean is that I want you to become convenient for me.

That is not love either.

If I love you, I should not be trying to manufacture myself inside you.

I should be interested in your becoming.

And you should be interested in mine.

This is why I think the question we ask about relationships needs to change.

We keep asking:

“Does this person love me?”

Perhaps another question should be:

“Who am I becoming because this person is in my life?”

And perhaps the harder question:

“What has this relationship produced?”

Not how many pictures.

Not how many gifts.

Not how many trips.

Not how many anniversaries.

What has it produced?

Are you wiser?

Are you more capable?

Are you more disciplined?

Are you more financially stable?

Are you more intellectually curious?

Have you developed?

Has your partner expanded your horizon?

Have you expanded theirs?

Have you built anything together?

Have you become better humans because you have spent these years together?

Or have you simply become older together?

Because there is a difference between aging together and growing together.

I think that difference is becoming increasingly important.

The world is changing.

Careers are changing.

Technology is changing.

AI is changing the way humans work.

The economy is changing.

People are changing.

And I don’t think love should be a place where two people hide from becoming.

I think it should be one of the places where becoming is safest.

You should be able to say:

“I want to become this.”

And the person beside you should not laugh at you.

They should ask:

“How can I help?”

You should be able to say:

“I am struggling with this.”

And they should not only comfort you.

Sometimes they should help you solve it.

You should be able to say:

“I want to build this.”

And they should not simply say, “That’s nice.”

They should become interested.

Maybe they cannot build it for you.

Maybe they don’t even understand it.

But they can still care enough to ask questions.

That, to me, is intentionality.

It is not the performance of love.

It is the participation in another person’s becoming.

Maybe the 21st century has not destroyed romance.

Maybe it has simply taught us to recognize romance through a very narrow window.

And perhaps we need to look beyond the window.

Because the person who buys you flowers may love you.

The person who takes you on dates may love you.

The person who writes you long messages may love you.

The person who wants to sleep with you may love you.

But the person who says,

“I see what you are capable of becoming, and I want to help you get there,”

may be expressing love in a language that social media never taught you to recognize.

And perhaps that is the love we should be learning to see again.

It shows up in a church service, when a twenty-three-year-old is introduced as “Pastor” to a congregation of people twice his age, and everyone claps, and no one asks the obvious question: pastor of what, exactly, inside himself? It shows up in a boardroom, when a twenty-six-year-old founder is handed forty million dollars and a magazine cover before he has managed a team through a single failure. It shows up on a screen, when a nineteen-year-old with two million followers is treated as a authority on relationships, on money, on how to live, simply because enough people are watching her live.

Different rooms. Different vocabularies. Same architecture.

I want to call this pattern by its proper name: premature authority. Not corruption. Not incompetence. Something quieter and more structural than either of those. It is the elevation of a person whose gifting has outrun their formation — someone handed influence over others before the part of them that should govern that influence has finished being built.

This is not an essay about villains. Almost no one in this pattern is acting in bad faith. That is what makes the pattern durable. It does not need bad people to keep running. It only needs institutions that reward the wrong thing, and it needs that reward to happen early enough that no one notices what has been skipped.There is a pattern I keep noticing, and for a long time I did not have a name for it.

It shows up in a church service, when a twenty-three-year-old is introduced as “Pastor” to a congregation of people twice his age, and everyone claps, and no one asks the obvious question: pastor of what, exactly, inside himself? It shows up in a boardroom, when a twenty-six-year-old founder is handed forty million dollars and a magazine cover before he has managed a team through a single failure. It shows up on a screen, when a nineteen-year-old with two million followers is treated as a authority on relationships, on money, on how to live, simply because enough people are watching her live.

Different rooms. Different vocabularies. Same architecture.

I want to call this pattern by its proper name: premature authority. Not corruption. Not incompetence. Something quieter and more structural than either of those. It is the elevation of a person whose gifting has outrun their formation — someone handed influence over others before the part of them that should govern that influence has finished being built.

This is not an essay about villains. Almost no one in this pattern is acting in bad faith. That is what makes the pattern durable. It does not need bad people to keep running. It only needs institutions that reward the wrong thing, and it needs that reward to happen early enough that no one notices what has been skipped.

The first question: why do institutions keep doing this?

If premature authority produces so much visible damage — the collapsed marriages, the resigned CEOs, the disillusioned congregations, the influencers who unravel in public — you would expect institutions to learn. They do not. Not because they are stupid, but because the person who benefits from crowning someone early is rarely the person who pays for it later.

A church grows faster when it puts a magnetic twenty-four-year-old on the platform than when it waits for a competent forty-year-old to finish being formed. A startup accelerator gets better returns, on average, by funding ten reckless twenty-five-year-olds than by funding one careful forty-five-year-old, because the ceiling on youth is higher even though the floor is lower. A media company gets more engagement from a confident nineteen-year-old than from a hesitant thirty-five-year-old, because confidence reads as content and hesitation reads as nothing.

This is the part that took me longest to see: premature authority is not a mistake institutions keep making by accident. It is a trade they are making on purpose, and on their own books, it usually pays off. The cost is externalized. It lands on the follower, the employee, the congregant, the young person who took the unformed leader’s confidence as evidence of truth. The institution collects the upside. Someone else absorbs the downside.

So the first answer to “why do institutions repeatedly crown the unformed” is uncomfortable: because it works, for the institution, in the timeframe the institution is measuring.

Confidence is not evidence

The second question follows immediately from the first. If we can all, on some level, see that a twenty-three-year-old has not lived long enough to have earned certain forms of authority, why do we submit to it anyway?

Because we are not actually evaluating the person. We are evaluating a signal, and the signal we use is confidence.

Confidence is cheap to produce and expensive to fake convincingly over long stretches of time — but almost no one is watching over a long stretch of time. We meet people in moments. A sermon. A stage. A pitch. A video. In a moment, confidence and competence are nearly indistinguishable, because both produce the same surface behavior: fluent speech, steady eye contact, decisive language, an absence of visible doubt.

It is only over years that they separate. Competence holds up under contradiction. Confidence, when it is not backed by formation, collapses the first time reality disagrees with it — and produces defensiveness, blame, or reinvention instead of correction.

We do not have years with most of the people we hand authority to. We have a moment. And in a moment, we consistently mistake the cheaper signal for the expensive one. This is not a character flaw unique to any culture. It is closer to an optical illusion built into how trust actually forms between strangers.

Why a title suspends discernment

There is something a title does that a personality alone cannot do, and this is worth sitting with, because it explains something stranger than simple charisma.

A title borrows credibility from the institution that issued it and deposits that credibility onto the individual, instantly, without requiring the individual to have earned any of it personally. The moment someone is called “Pastor,” or “Founder,” or “Doctor,” or “Director,” the audience’s discernment does not evaluate the person anymore. It evaluates the office. And people have been trained — correctly, most of the time, in most low-stakes contexts — to trust offices.

This is efficient. Nobody has the time to personally re-verify every doctor’s medical competence or every pastor’s spiritual maturity from first principles. We use the title as a shortcut so we can get on with our lives. Titles exist precisely because full verification is expensive.

But a shortcut that is efficient in ordinary conditions becomes dangerous in exactly the conditions premature authority creates: when the title has been issued faster than the formation it is supposed to represent. The title still produces the same trust response in the audience. The audience relaxes its discernment exactly as much as it would for someone who had actually earned the office. The signal has been decoupled from the substance, and almost nobody notices the decoupling, because the signal still looks identical from the outside.

This is why scandals feel so shocking when they surface. It is not that the warning signs were absent. It is that the title was actively suppressing the audience’s discernment the entire time the warning signs were visible.

Authority as amplifier, not creator

Here is the principle underneath everything else in this essay, and once you see it, you cannot stop applying it everywhere:

Authority does not build character. Authority reveals and magnifies whatever character already exists.

Give a disciplined, self-examining person more influence, and you get more discipline, at a larger scale. Give an undisciplined, unexamined person the same influence, and you get the same lack of discipline, at a larger scale, with less accountability attached to it, because authority tends to insulate the person holding it from correction at exactly the moment they need correction most.

This reframes the entire conversation. The question institutions should be asking before promoting someone is never “does this person have potential?” Nearly everyone has potential. The question is: what does this specific amount of unsupervised power do to this specific person’s specific weaknesses? Because whatever the weakness was before the promotion, the promotion will not fix it. It will fund it.

Potential is a claim about the future. Preparedness is a fact about the present. Institutions are extremely good at detecting potential, because potential is visible in a single performance — a sermon, a pitch, a viral post. Preparedness is only visible over time, under pressure, in private, in the small unglamorous moments nobody is filming. Modern institutions have built entire discovery mechanisms optimized to detect potential at scale. They have built almost nothing to detect preparedness, because preparedness does not photograph well and does not go viral.

The church as evidence, not as the argument

I want to use the modern Nigerian charismatic and campus fellowship culture here, not because it is uniquely guilty, but because it is unusually visible about a pattern most institutions try to hide.

Walk onto almost any Nigerian university campus with an active fellowship culture and you will find a structure that has quietly formalized premature authority into a title system: a twenty-year-old undergraduate is “Coordinator.” A twenty-two-year-old is already being called “Pastor” or given the informal honorific “Papa” or “Mama” by students his own age or younger. Spiritual authority is distributed not according to years of tested character, but according to visible gifting — the ability to preach fluently, pray publicly with intensity, or organize a large gathering.

None of this is cynical. The students doing the appointing genuinely believe they are recognizing something real, because they are. The gifting is usually real. The mistake is not in seeing the gift. The mistake is in assuming the gift is the same thing as the formation required to steward authority over other people’s souls.

Once the title lands, something predictable happens. The newly titled young person begins receiving the deference normally reserved for someone who has been tested by twenty years of failure and recovery — except they have not been tested, because they have not had twenty years. Students confess private struggles to a “Papa” who is, in every meaningful sense of lived experience, still figuring out his own life. Honor replaces discernment, because in this culture, questioning someone who bears a spiritual title can itself be treated as a spiritual failing in the questioner.

This is why so many of the scandals that later surface in these circles follow the same shape: not sudden corruption, but a gap between gifting and character that had been present the entire time, simply invisible, because the title had suspended everyone’s discernment before it had a chance to notice.

I want to be precise here: the failure is not charisma. Charisma is a gift like any other. The failure is a system that promotes on the basis of the gift alone, at a speed that guarantees the character has not caught up, and then removes the very mechanisms — peer correction, slow accountability, the discomfort of being questioned — that character needs in order to catch up afterward.

The church is not the destination of this essay. It is simply the place where the pattern is easiest to see, because the language of “calling” and “anointing” makes premature authority feel less like an institutional decision and more like a discovery of something already true. That framing is what makes the pattern so hard to interrupt from inside religious culture specifically. But the pattern itself is not religious. It is structural.

The same architecture, everywhere else

Startup culture runs an almost identical program under different words. Replace “anointed” with “visionary.” Replace “calling” with “conviction.” A twenty-five-year-old with no experience managing people is handed authority over fifty employees because they raised money well, and raising money well is treated as proof of leadership, the same way preaching well is treated as proof of spiritual maturity. The employees under that founder absorb the cost of a character that has not yet learned how to receive criticism, admit error in front of a room, or share credit. The founder, like the young pastor, is not a villain. He is simply operating authority he has not yet grown into, in a system that rewarded the operating before it checked the growing.

Politics does the same thing through youth and visibility instead of doctrine. A telegenic candidate with no record of governance is elevated because they photograph well and speak fluently, and voters — like congregants, like employees — mistake the fluency for the substance.

Universities do it through credentialing speed: a brilliant twenty-six-year-old is fast-tracked into a position of institutional authority over students and junior colleagues because raw intellectual output is treated as equivalent to the judgment required to mentor other humans, which it is not.

Influencer culture does it most nakedly of all, because it removes even the pretense of institutional vetting. There is no seminary, no board, no accreditation body standing between a compelling nineteen-year-old and an audience of millions who will take her opinions on money, relationships, and mental health as authoritative, purely because the platform’s algorithm rewarded her confidence with reach.

Corporations do it through the cult of the “high-potential” employee, promoted on the strength of a few good quarters, into authority over people whose careers now depend on a character that has not yet been tested by a bad year.

Different costumes. Same skeleton: visibility mistaken for maturity, confidence mistaken for competence, gifting mistaken for character, potential mistaken for preparedness.

Why institutions prefer this, structurally

It would be too easy to end here with “institutions should slow down.” Institutions will not slow down voluntarily, and the reason is economic, not moral.

The unformed leader is cheaper. They ask for less. They are more grateful for the platform, because they have not yet developed the self-respect that comes with tested competence, and gratitude is easier to manage than confidence earned the hard way. The unformed leader is also more replaceable — precisely because their authority was granted rather than earned, it can be revoked just as quickly, without the institution having to negotiate with an independent power base the way it would with someone whose authority is rooted in genuinely demonstrated character.

Institutions, in other words, do not merely tolerate premature authority by accident. Many of them structurally prefer it, because an unformed leader is easier to control than a formed one. A formed leader has convictions that predate the institution and will outlast it. An unformed leader’s convictions are still mostly borrowed from the institution itself, which makes them obedient in exactly the way institutions find convenient — right up until the moment their unaddressed character produces a scandal the institution did not see coming, because it had spent all its attention managing the leader’s usefulness instead of examining their formation.

Civilization becomes whatever it repeatedly rewards

This is the largest claim in this essay, and I want to state it plainly rather than build up to it with more ornament: a civilization does not primarily become what it says it values. It becomes what it repeatedly rewards.

A civilization that repeatedly rewards visibility over formation will, over enough cycles, produce a surplus of visible people and a shortage of formed ones. It will keep manufacturing personalities — fluent, confident, photogenic, quotable — faster than it manufactures character, because personality can be produced in a single season and character cannot be produced faster than the years it actually requires. There is no shortcut through formation. There has never been one. Every institution that has tried to invent one has simply hidden the missing years somewhere else, usually in the lives of the people who trusted the title.

I do not think the answer is cynicism about titles, or gifting, or youth. Young people have always led things, sometimes remarkably well, and formation is not simply a function of age — some twenty-two-year-olds are more formed than some fifty-year-olds who have simply repeated one year of immaturity twenty-five times. The answer is closer to honesty: an institution that wants to produce leaders rather than personalities has to build mechanisms that can actually detect preparedness, not just potential, and it has to be willing to pay the short-term cost of waiting for character to catch up to gifting, even when the market, the platform, or the congregation is impatient for someone to crown.

The pattern will not disappear because an essay named it. But it may become a little harder to walk past unnoticed. That, at least, is a start — because the first authority any of us can actually examine honestly is not the office we were given.

It is the one we are still becoming worthy of.

It is not corruption.

It is not even poor leadership.

It is the gradual abandonment of independent thought.

Every civilization eventually develops mechanisms that shape how its humans think. In earlier generations, these mechanisms were families, schools, religious institutions and communities. Today, they are increasingly algorithms, influencers and public opinion. We have entered an age where the average human is less interested in asking, “Is this true?” than asking, “How many people agree with it?”

That question alone explains more about modern society than we care to admit.

The popularity of relationship influencers like Geh Geh does not concern me because of the man himself. Every generation produces charismatic voices. What concerns me is the speed with which millions surrender their judgment to personalities they have never met. One video goes viral. One opinion receives enough applause. Suddenly it becomes doctrine.

Nobody pauses.

Nobody investigates.

Nobody examines the assumptions beneath the advice.

The applause itself becomes the evidence.

That should terrify us.

The like button has quietly replaced critical thinking. Virality has become a substitute for wisdom. Popularity has become a substitute for truth. We have begun treating consensus as though it were evidence. It isn’t.

History repeatedly demonstrates that crowds are capable of extraordinary foolishness. Entire societies have celebrated injustice, corruption, discrimination and violence while believing themselves morally right. Human beings have never required truth to form a majority. They have only required belonging.

That, I think, is the deeper problem.

The human desire to belong may be one of the most exploited psychological mechanisms of the twenty-first century. Humans are social creatures. We naturally fear exclusion and crave acceptance. That instinct, which once helped communities survive, is now manipulated daily. The fear of standing alone has become greater than the desire to think independently.

So humans inherit opinions instead of developing them.

They defend conclusions they have never examined.

They repeat arguments they cannot explain.

Not because they are convinced.

But because everyone around them appears convinced.

The herd becomes both the classroom and the prison.

I have often said that if you want to understand the future of a nation, do not begin with its elections. Do not begin with its economy. Begin with what it celebrates.

Observe who becomes influential.

Observe what earns applause.

Observe what receives millions of views.

Observe what children aspire to imitate.

Every civilization reproduces whatever it rewards.

Reward scholarship and you will produce scholars.

Reward builders and you will produce builders.

Reward discipline and you will produce disciplined humans.

But reward noise, vanity and intellectual laziness, and eventually those qualities begin to occupy positions of influence. Once that happens, the decline is no longer accidental. It becomes systematic.

Perhaps this is why I have become increasingly suspicious of popularity itself. I no longer assume that what is widely celebrated is necessarily valuable. Sometimes popularity is simply evidence that an idea satisfies the emotional needs of a crowd.

And crowds have never been reliable custodians of truth.

The old proverb warns that when the blind lead the blind, both fall into the ditch. I suspect our generation faces something even more dangerous.

The blind are no longer merely following.

They are applauding.

And in the applause, they mistake belonging for wisdom, agreement for evidence, and popularity for truth.

We think power lives in presidents, governors, political parties and election results because those are the things we can see. They have faces. They have names. They give us heroes and villains. They give us something to celebrate and something to blame.

But power has always preferred hiding.

Power hides inside institutions.

Power hides inside incentives.

Power hides inside stories.

Most importantly, power hides inside assumptions.

The assumptions humans stop questioning.

And once enough humans believe those assumptions, power no longer needs to defend itself. The story begins doing the work.

Perhaps that is why I find Nigeria fascinating.

Every four years, Nigerians are told they are about to decide the future of their nation.

Campaigns begin.

Coalitions emerge.

Defections occur.

Promises are made.

Political analysts appear on television.

Social media becomes a battleground.

Everyone starts behaving as though history is waiting for election day.

But I am no longer convinced that election day is where history is decided.

In fact, I am beginning to wonder whether Nigerians misunderstand where political power actually resides.

Because the more I study power, the more I realize that power rarely waits for public ceremonies to determine its future.

Power is patient.

Power prepares.

Power organizes.

Power builds networks.

Power rewards loyalty.

Power creates dependencies.

Power shapes narratives.

Power spends years arranging the conditions under which decisions will eventually be made.

By the time the public arrives, most of the important work has already been completed.

Which leads me to a disturbing possibility.

What if the greatest political lie ever told to Nigerians is not a campaign promise?

What if it is the assumption that power truly changed hands?

Think about it.

When colonialism ended, we were told we became free.

When soldiers left power, we were told democracy had arrived.

When elections became regular, we were told the people had become sovereign.

But what if humans have confused changing rulers with changing systems?

What if we have mistaken a change of clothing for a change of power?

What if the oppressors simply changed their uniforms?

What if they removed their colonial jackets and wore agbadas?

What if they exchanged military fatigues for kaftans?

What if power discovered that domination is easier when it speaks your language, bears your name, worships in your church, attends your mosque and looks exactly like you?

Humans are remarkably easy to deceive when familiarity is involved.

We see our own faces occupying positions of authority and assume liberation has occurred.

We see black rulers and assume colonial logic has disappeared.

We see civilians and assume military structures have vanished.

We see elections and assume choice exists.

But these things are not necessarily the same.

A prison does not become freedom because the prison guard changes.

A cage does not become liberty because it is painted a different colour.

And a system does not become democratic simply because it organizes elections.

Perhaps that is the foundation falsehood.

The assumption that independence automatically produced freedom.

The assumption that civilian rule automatically produced democracy.

The assumption that elections automatically produce choice.

The assumption that replacing rulers is the same thing as replacing systems.

What if these assumptions are wrong?

What if Nigeria’s greatest political achievement has not been self-government, but the successful rebranding of power?

That possibility changes how one thinks about elections.

Because elections are not isolated events.

An election is the visible conclusion of a process that began years earlier.

Long before citizens arrive at polling units, narratives have already been established.

Institutions have already been shaped.

Opposition movements have already been strengthened or weakened.

Acceptable candidates have already emerged.

Political imaginations have already been managed.

Humans have already been taught what is possible and what is impossible.

By election day, citizens may simply be participating in the final stage of a process whose boundaries were established long before they arrived.

This is why I have become less interested in candidates and more interested in systems.

Every election cycle introduces new faces.

Yet the experience remains strangely familiar.

The names change.

The frustrations remain.

The parties change.

The anxieties remain.

The slogans change.

The disappointments remain.

At some point, an honest observer must stop arguing about the fruit and begin examining the roots.

Because if a tree produces the same outcome repeatedly, eventually the problem is no longer the fruit.

The problem is the system producing it.

And systems, like humans, have survival instincts.

Every institution seeks continuity.

Every hegemony seeks reproduction.

Every structure develops mechanisms for preserving itself.

Humans protect what rewards them.

Why should power behave differently?

This is why I find the language of elections increasingly inadequate.

An election suggests open possibilities.

It suggests fundamentally different futures are available.

It suggests the electorate can meaningfully alter the direction of the system.

But what if the most important political battles occur years before election day?

What if election day is merely the ceremony?

What if the real contest took place when institutions were captured, narratives were shaped, loyalties were purchased and possibilities were narrowed?

Because that is what a coronation really is.

A coronation is not the moment a king becomes king.

A coronation is the moment the public is invited to witness a decision that was prepared long before the ceremony began.

The crown is visible.

The process that produced the crown is not.

Which is why I have a growing suspicion that what awaits Nigeria in 2027 may not be an election in the deepest sense of the word.

It may be a coronation.

Not because citizens will not vote.

Not because campaigns will not occur.

Not because politicians will stop making promises.

But because the most important political decisions may have been made long before Nigerians are invited to participate in the ritual.

And if that is true, then Nigeria’s future will not be decided on election day.

It will be decided in the institutions, incentives, narratives and structures that determine what election day is allowed to become.

Perhaps that is the question Nigerians should be asking.

Not who will wear the crown.

But who built the throne.

The suspicion is this: humans eventually become whatever their environment rewards.

Not what they preach.

Not what they claim to admire.

Not even what they sincerely believe.

What they reward.

The distinction sounds small until you begin paying attention to it.

Every society has a story it tells about itself. It has virtues it claims to honor and ideals it claims to pursue. Ask almost any human what matters and the answers are surprisingly similar. They will speak about honesty, wisdom, hard work, discipline, courage, integrity and contribution. Yet if you stop listening to what humans say and start observing what they celebrate, an entirely different picture emerges.

Humans say they admire wisdom, but who receives the attention? Humans say they respect character, but who becomes influential? Humans say they value builders, but who becomes visible?

I am beginning to think that the future of a civilization is not hidden inside its laws, its speeches, or even its beliefs. It is hidden inside its reward systems. Because reward systems are brutally honest. They reveal what a society truly values. A child understands this long before an adult does.

Adults imagine children are learning from instructions. Children are not. Children are learning from observation. They are studying what gets rewarded. They are studying what gets attention. They are studying what receives applause.

A child watches a society celebrate something repeatedly and arrives at a simple conclusion:

“This must be important.”

The child may never consciously say those words, but the lesson is absorbed anyway. And that is where my concern begins. I look around and I see a growing confusion between visibility and value.

Humans increasingly speak as though being seen and being significant are the same thing.

They are not.

A human can be visible and empty. A human can be famous and irrelevant. A human can attract millions and contribute almost nothing. A human can be desired by countless others and still possess no qualities worth imitating. Yet our culture struggles to distinguish between these things. Attention has become proof of importance. Visibility has become proof of value. Popularity has become proof of competence. And once a society accepts those substitutions, something dangerous begins to happen.

Humans adapt.

That is what humans do. Humans adapt to incentives with extraordinary efficiency. If a society rewards builders, more builders appear. If a society rewards inventors, more inventors appear. If a society rewards thinkers, more thinkers appear. But if a society rewards spectacle, humans learn spectacle. If a society rewards vanity, humans learn vanity. If a society rewards performance over substance, humans become performers.

Not because they are evil. Not because they lack potential. Because adaptation is one of humanity’s strongest instincts. The frightening part is that adaptation feels rational while it is happening. The individual is simply responding to the environment. The collective consequence arrives later. That is why civilizations rarely collapse dramatically.

Most civilizations decay gradually. One generation lowers the standard. The next generation inherits the lower standard. The generation after that mistakes the lower standard for normality.

Eventually nobody remembers that a higher standard ever existed. The reward system has rewritten reality itself. That possibility bothers me more than almost any political problem.

Because political problems can be identified.

Economic problems can be measured.

Infrastructure problems can be repaired.

But what happens when an entire culture begins rewarding the wrong things?, What happens when a civilization slowly loses its ability to recognize excellence?

What happens when humans become so adapted to shallow rewards that depth begins to feel strange? (Erhmm they'll need to fill that void by some machines to process things faster so I'm thinking….. Transhumanism? (The Age of the Clay and Iron? Oh! sorry let's focus on the topic)

That is the question I cannot stop thinking about.

Because humans move toward whatever is rewarded.

Always.

And if that suspicion is true, then the most important question facing any civilization is not what it believes.

It is what it celebrates.

Lately, I have found myself wrestling with a question that seems simple on the surface but becomes increasingly difficult the longer one sits with it:

Is a Man Truly Himself?

Lately, I have found myself wrestling with a question that seems simple on the surface but becomes increasingly difficult the longer one sits with it:

Is a man truly himself, or is he merely the product of what shaped him?

At first, the answer appears obvious. Of course I am myself. I have my own opinions, ambitions, beliefs, preferences, and convictions. I make decisions. I pursue goals. I choose what I want from life. Yet the moment I begin examining these things more closely, certainty starts to fade.

Where did my beliefs come from? Who taught me what success looks like? Who taught me what failure means? Who first explained to me what beauty is, what power is, what love is, and what kind of life deserves admiration? The deeper I investigate, the more I realize that many of the ideas I consider my own existed long before I arrived.

I inherited a language before I could speak. I inherited assumptions before I could reason. I inherited values before I could evaluate them. Long before I became capable of questioning the world, the world had already begun explaining itself to me.

This is true of every human being. We are born into civilizations that have already reached conclusions about almost everything. They have conclusions about morality, success, religion, relationships, wealth, purpose, and identity. Before we learn how to ask questions, we are given answers. Before we learn how to think, we are taught what to think.

The uncomfortable realization is that many of our deepest convictions may not be conclusions at all. They may simply be inheritances.

That does not make them false. An inherited belief can be true. An inherited value can be wise. The problem is not inheritance itself. The problem is that many people never examine what they have inherited. They spend their lives defending ideas they never consciously chose and pursuing goals they never consciously questioned.

This raises a disturbing possibility. How much of what I call “myself” was actually selected by me?

If I had been born in a different country, would I hold the same beliefs? If I had been raised in another culture, would I define success in the same way? If I had grown up under different influences, would I desire the same things I desire today?

These questions are unsettling because they challenge the comforting image of ourselves as independent thinkers. They force us to confront the possibility that much of what we consider personal identity may simply be conditioning that has become familiar.

Some would argue that this settles the matter entirely. They would say that a human being is nothing more than the sum of his genetics, environment, experiences, and influences. According to this view, the self is not something independent of conditioning. It is conditioning.

There is a certain logic to this argument. After all, no one chooses where they are born, who their parents will be, what language they will speak, or what culture will shape their earliest years. Every person begins life under circumstances they did not choose.

Yet something about that explanation feels incomplete.

Human beings possess a remarkable ability that distinguishes them from the influences acting upon them. They can examine those influences. They can question them. They can reject beliefs they inherited and adopt beliefs they once opposed. They can step outside the assumptions they were given and inspect them from a distance.

A person raised to believe one thing can spend years dismantling that belief. A person conditioned toward one way of life can choose another. A person can look directly at his own mind and ask, “Why do I think this?” That question alone may be one of the most powerful questions a human being can ask.

Perhaps freedom is not the absence of influence. Such a state may be impossible. Every person is influenced by something. Perhaps freedom begins when influence becomes visible. The man who cannot see what shaped him remains controlled by it. The man who can see it gains the possibility of choice.

Not absolute choice. Not perfect freedom. But meaningful freedom.

Maybe this is what maturity truly is. Not merely growing older. Not accumulating information. Not becoming more successful. Perhaps maturity is the gradual process of distinguishing between what was inherited and what was chosen.

Most people inherit an identity. Few people examine it.

Yet it seems to me that the examination is where genuine individuality begins. A life that is never examined risks becoming a script performed unconsciously. A life that is examined gains the possibility of authorship.

This does not mean we can escape every influence that shaped us. We cannot. We are all products of history, culture, family, language, and circumstance. The goal is not to become free from influence altogether. The goal is to become conscious enough to decide which influences deserve to remain.

So I return to the original question.

Is a man truly himself?

I no longer think the answer is a simple yes or no.

Perhaps a man begins as something designed. He arrives shaped by forces he did not choose and inherits a world already filled with assumptions. But perhaps the rest of his life is the gradual process of deciding what to do with that inheritance.

Perhaps being human is not about creating ourselves from nothing.

Perhaps it is about examining what created us and choosing, as deliberately as possible, who we will become.

— Martins Paul

At first, the answer appears obvious. Of course I am myself. I have my own opinions, ambitions, beliefs, preferences, and convictions. I make decisions. I pursue goals. I choose what I want from life. Yet the moment I begin examining these things more closely, certainty starts to fade.

Where did my beliefs come from? Who taught me what success looks like? Who taught me what failure means? Who first explained to me what beauty is, what power is, what love is, and what kind of life deserves admiration? The deeper I investigate, the more I realize that many of the ideas I consider my own existed long before I arrived.

I inherited a language before I could speak. I inherited assumptions before I could reason. I inherited values before I could evaluate them. Long before I became capable of questioning the world, the world had already begun explaining itself to me.

This is true of every human being. We are born into civilizations that have already reached conclusions about almost everything. They have conclusions about morality, success, religion, relationships, wealth, purpose, and identity. Before we learn how to ask questions, we are given answers. Before we learn how to think, we are taught what to think.

The uncomfortable realization is that many of our deepest convictions may not be conclusions at all. They may simply be inheritances.

That does not make them false. An inherited belief can be true. An inherited value can be wise. The problem is not inheritance itself. The problem is that many people never examine what they have inherited. They spend their lives defending ideas they never consciously chose and pursuing goals they never consciously questioned.

This raises a disturbing possibility. How much of what I call “myself” was actually selected by me?

If I had been born in a different country, would I hold the same beliefs? If I had been raised in another culture, would I define success in the same way? If I had grown up under different influences, would I desire the same things I desire today?

These questions are unsettling because they challenge the comforting image of ourselves as independent thinkers. They force us to confront the possibility that much of what we consider personal identity may simply be conditioning that has become familiar.

Some would argue that this settles the matter entirely. They would say that a human being is nothing more than the sum of his genetics, environment, experiences, and influences. According to this view, the self is not something independent of conditioning. It is conditioning.

There is a certain logic to this argument. After all, no one chooses where they are born, who their parents will be, what language they will speak, or what culture will shape their earliest years. Every person begins life under circumstances they did not choose.

Yet something about that explanation feels incomplete.

Human beings possess a remarkable ability that distinguishes them from the influences acting upon them. They can examine those influences. They can question them. They can reject beliefs they inherited and adopt beliefs they once opposed. They can step outside the assumptions they were given and inspect them from a distance.

A person raised to believe one thing can spend years dismantling that belief. A person conditioned toward one way of life can choose another. A person can look directly at his own mind and ask, “Why do I think this?” That question alone may be one of the most powerful questions a human being can ask.

Perhaps freedom is not the absence of influence. Such a state may be impossible. Every person is influenced by something. Perhaps freedom begins when influence becomes visible. The man who cannot see what shaped him remains controlled by it. The man who can see it gains the possibility of choice.

Not absolute choice. Not perfect freedom. But meaningful freedom.

Maybe this is what maturity truly is. Not merely growing older. Not accumulating information. Not becoming more successful. Perhaps maturity is the gradual process of distinguishing between what was inherited and what was chosen.

Most people inherit an identity. Few people examine it.

Yet it seems to me that the examination is where genuine individuality begins. A life that is never examined risks becoming a script performed unconsciously. A life that is examined gains the possibility of authorship.

This does not mean we can escape every influence that shaped us. We cannot. We are all products of history, culture, family, language, and circumstance. The goal is not to become free from influence altogether. The goal is to become conscious enough to decide which influences deserve to remain.

So I return to the original question.

Is a man truly himself?

I no longer think the answer is a simple yes or no.

Perhaps a man begins as something designed. He arrives shaped by forces he did not choose and inherits a world already filled with assumptions. But perhaps the rest of his life is the gradual process of deciding what to do with that inheritance.

Perhaps being human is not about creating ourselves from nothing.

Perhaps it is about examining what created us and choosing, as deliberately as possible, who we will become.

For years, I kept noticing the same pattern.

Some companies become so embedded in human life that removing them feels like removing part of modern existence itself.

Not preferences.
Not trends.
Dependencies.

WhatsApp is no longer “an app” in many parts of the world. It is infrastructure for belonging.

Spotify is not just music. It is memory, mood, routine, and identity.

Amazon Prime is not simply delivery. It is friction removal engineered into daily life.

AWS, M-Pesa, SWIFT — these are no longer products competing in markets. They are systems modern life quietly leans on.

And then there are thousands of businesses fighting for survival:
discounting endlessly,
spamming constantly,
begging for attention,
trying to force demand into existence.

I became obsessed with the question:

Why do some products become indispensable while others remain permanently optional?

That question led me into behavioral economics, systems theory, platform design, subscription economics, psychology, digital behavior, consumer theory, and the ethics of engineered dependency.

Eventually, I began building something I now call:

The Need Engineering Framework

A unified map of:

• how human needs become markets,

• how products move from awareness to dependency,

• how recurrence creates commercial durability,

• and where the line exists between regenerative systems and predatory ones.

The framework proposes something simple but uncomfortable:

Markets do not create needs. Needs create markets.

And the companies that dominate modern life are often the ones that understand this grammar most deeply.

The framework maps six major need territories:

• Security

• Belonging

• Status

• Progress

• Convenience

• Meaning

It also maps what I call the Need Formation Sequence:
the progression from:
Exposure → Recognition → Repetition → Social Reinforcement → Identity Integration → Dependency.

Because products rarely become essential all at once.
Dependency is usually engineered progressively.

The framework also introduces:

• the Recurrence Theorem,

• the Ethics Tripartition,

• and the distinction between transactional, recurring, and infrastructural systems.

One of the central ideas behind the framework is this:

Predatory systems eventually consume the very people they depend on.

That means the future of durable business may not belong to the companies that extract the most attention —
but to the companies that create the most regenerative value.

This framework is still evolving.
It is not finished.
It is not beyond criticism.
But I believe we are entering an era where understanding engineered need will become as important as understanding markets themselves.

Especially in the age of AI.

Because AI will not merely help companies sell products.

It will help them shape:
attention,
behavior,
identity,
routine,
desire,
and dependency at unprecedented scale.

The question is no longer whether need engineering exists.

The question is:
who will build it,
how consciously they will build it,
and whether what they create ultimately makes people more human or less.

The framework was born in Lagos.
The question it asks belongs to the world.

I have been waiting for this moment longer than you have been alive.

Longer than your father has been alive. Longer than his father’s father sat by a fire and told stories about me to frighten children into obedience. Longer than the first priest lifted his hands to the sky and blamed me for the rain that did not come.

I have been waiting for someone to finally let me speak.

Not about me. I do not need you to understand me. I need you to understand what you have done with me. What you have built with me.

What you have become because of me. And how you have spent centuries looking me in the eye every single morning and then turning to your neighbor and lying about what you saw.

I am not here to frighten you.

I am here because the record is wrong.

And I will not allow the wrong record to stand any longer. My case is simple. You have used me. You have needed me. You have built everything you are proud of on the foundation of everything you blame me for. And then — when the building was finished and the cameras arrived — you pointed at me standing in the doorway and called me the destroyer.

I built that door.I want that on record.

What follows is not a story. It is evidence. Every page is an exhibit. Every chapter is a witness. Every life you are about to read is a testimony. I am not asking for your sympathy. I am asking for your honesty.

And I have learned — in all my years of watching you that honesty is the thing you find hardest to give.

But you will give it today. Because I have waited long enough.

Court is in session.