Start with a question.

Seven paths through the cultural selection: relationships, consent, identities, couples and money, learning to love, LGBTQI+ visibility, and friendship. Each connects works for a stated reason and leaves you free to choose the order.

We love each other. What do we expect?

A couple rarely arrives without baggage: ideas about fidelity, each person’s role and what a successful relationship should look like. Three ways to open the subject.

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The words we use in bed.

Consent, normality, expectations: we use these words without always giving them the same meaning. Two essays offer different ways to examine them.

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Lives we see too rarely.

From a Catskills house’s archives to older generations’ memories of love, this path brings together identities and relationships across different periods.

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We share everything. Even the bill?

Paying rent, organising groceries, finding time: shared life also happens in material details. Three works connect money with the expectations surrounding couples.

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Where do we learn to love?

Recognising a love story in a film can be quick. Saying what we expect from our own relationship may take longer. An essay, documentary voices and Mona Chollet offer three beginnings.

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Being visible. On whose terms?

Telling your story, publishing an essay, appearing on screen: visibility takes different forms. Four works change format and context without treating lesbian, gay and trans experiences as interchangeable.

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What if we made room for friends?

We find time for a couple and plan space for family. Friendship often fits into what remains. Three works examine its place in a life, the words we exchange and the families we build.

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