Алиса Пермякова

Tamara and Roman first met back at school. She noticed an angular, shy and timid boy, and he noticed a thoughtful, dreamy girl who behaved as if she were older than her years. Somehow it just happened that they kept ending up together at break time, or riding home on the same bus.

- "We'll find you a James Bond!" I promised Nina light-heartedly. "He'll be a star, handsome and the best at everything. Once you fall for him, you'll be running after him at a gallop..." I have a little "vice": I like to describe personality types in more vivid images. For example, instead of my own personality type, which the author of the S-Theory called schizoid, I say "Dr House", and instead of the narcissistic one, which was supposed to harmonise Nina perfectly, I say "James Bond". Let me

I will never stop marvelling at the genius of the old storytellers who invented the phrase “and they lived happily ever after”. Behind that phrase, as behind mayonnaise, you can hide any flaw, crack or whiff of staleness: the fact that once the tale was over the newlyweds lived in completely different wings of the palace, if in the same palace at all; the fact that affairs with the servants did not count as adultery; and a great deal more besides. The most interesting thing in these stories is the idealised figures of the princesses and their princes. The kind that simply do not exist.

One of the biggest problems in modern relationships, to my mind, is the sheer number of stereotypes: a woman should be weak, a woman should adapt, a woman should carry the household on her shoulders, a man should be tough, a man should earn, a man should despise housework, a man should pay for everything... The list could go on for a very long time.