New York Times essayist, cartoonist, and author of We Learn Nothing, Tim Kreider explores the age-old issues of love and relationships in his second collection of essays and ponders why they’re so bafflingly hard to get right.

Tim Kreider is uniquely talented at delving into his own personal quirks, experiences, and adventures and returning with stories that hum with universal appeal. In his latest collection, he focuses on a common theme: This is a book about love—about sex and companionship, relationships and breakups, frustration and desire. In each essay, Kreider expands on these experiences, touching on psychology, religion, politics, and philosophy—what he calls “the Big Questions.”

I Wrote This Book Because I Love You tells a tale of dramatic twists, turns, and near-misses, from Kreider’s current singledom stretching back to the moment in second grade when he first caught Phoebe’s eye and found himself falling for his first crush. In the decades since—in the essays included here—he’s had whirlwind flings, long-burning relationships, and painful break-ups, both inflicted and suffered. But his relationship stories are hardly conventional. There are friendships that explode (or implode) into frenzied affairs; a fake marriage; crushes ranging from pastor to prostitute; an actual groupie who reaches out to our befuddled author; and a nineteen-year-long domestic partnership with one beautiful, cruelly indifferent cat.

With the same talent, wisdom, and wit he brought to We Learn Nothing, Tim Kreider now proves he is among the most talented essayists at work today, compared often to David Sedaris and David Foster Wallace. Intimate and universal, I Wrote This Book Because I Love You is a powerful portrait of just what love is and can be: complicated, messy, hilarious, embarrassing, and yet irrepressible, uplifting, and sustaining.