When entering into a marriage one ought to ask oneself: do you believe you are going to enjoy talking with this woman up into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory, but most of the time you are together will be devoted to conversation.
— Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human
The best part of marriage is friendship. If this is great enough, it may itself, by moderation, look beyond and overcome the aphrodisiac element. Without friendship, marriage makes both parties vulgar in thinking and contemptible.
— Nietzsche, Unpublished Fragments from the Period of Human, All Too Human I (Winter 1874/75–Winter 1877/78)
In the preceding Substack Note, Christian says she has been accused more than once of being a man pretending to be a woman. On this evidence, I could be convinced. I would struggle to think of a more quintessentially young-male way of thinking about relationships. So: we have a woman giving dating advice that sounds like it could have come from Andrew Tate, and we have a lifelong bachelor with famously complicated views toward women giving prescient advice on relationship priorities. It’s a funny old world.
October 2, 2026 @ 2:11 pm
I generally like Autumn but that’s some bizarre advice for sure. It’s like something I would have said at 22. Regardless of gender, there will be times when the person you married, no matter how robust your romantic life together is, will basically feel like a monk or nun and the thought of mounting you is gonna be about as appealing as licking a trashcan. You get back to the good connubial times by actually wanting to be around that person and hearing what they have to say in the interim.
Nietzsche could be a bit of an edgelord about women himself of course (which gets flattened into some moronic takes, but what doesn’t) and I probably wouldn’t steer my son too strongly into some of his advice. But even when he starts getting into Schopenhauer style “bitches ain’t shit but hos and tricks” territory, he had an underlying insight into the way they are at their best. I don’t think I’d ever tell my daughter “oh yeah you’ll be at your best when you’re a SLUT for your MAN” and by transitive property I wouldn’t want any other young woman to think that either.
October 2, 2026 @ 3:33 pm
Yeah, my basic assumption is that much of Nietzsche’s “misogyny” was partly Schopenhauer’s influence, and partly inspired by his frustrations with his mom and sister (I guess we’d call that “subtweeting” now). Reportedly, he was always a gallant gentleman with his female friends. One of them indicated an interest in reading his books once, and he surprised her by bursting into tears, fearing that she’d be offended, mostly because she was devoutly religious.
I don’t follow Christian closely, so I wondered if perhaps this was some extremely-tongue-in-cheek inside joke, but if it was, I guess she’d understand a casual reader missing it.