Binary thinking: how and why should we move beyond it?

Hello, my dancing green shoots,

Today, we wanted to give an idea that’s taken a bit of a battering lately the respect it deserves: nuance, in every part of our lives. Because we see extreme positions being celebrated everywhere — but does the world really have to be so black and white?

What if real freedom meant stepping outside the boxes we’ve been put in?

From a very young age, we’re taught to pick a side. Team Pikachu or Bulbasaur (well, that one’s not up for debate: Bulba Bulba love), for or against, good or bad. This habit of sorting everything into two columns didn’t just pop up in our algorithms, and it doesn’t stop at fiction: it seeps into our everyday choices, how we love and what we think a "successful" life looks like.

So we wanted to question binary thinking: where does it come from, who benefits from it and, above all, what lies between options A and B when they’re presented as the only answers? 

Binary thinking is the reflex that reduces a situation to just two possibilities, when in reality there are often countless others. A purchasing decision, an identity, a life path: everything gets squeezed into two tiny boxes, as though the world only had an on/off switch. Learning to spot this pattern is already a step towards breaking free of it.

Where does our instinct to pick a side come from?

Spoiler: it starts in childhood (hello, my dear therapist). The stories we’re told often hinge on opposing pairs: hero·ines versus traitor·sses, friend·es versus enem·eies, the one we’re "supposed" to prefer. The sagas that shaped whole generations relied on this storytelling device: two suitors, two camps and an audience expected to pick a side.

It’s no accident this tactic works so well in adulthood too, whether in politics, branding or celebrity gossip. A neatly packaged divide grabs attention, sparks debate and pushes us to take sides. On social media in particular, nuance doesn’t draw much of a crowd: algorithms reward strong reactions, and nothing works better than "you’re either with us or against us".

One huge problem is that this pick-a-side logic also works as a pretty effective form of control: as long as we’re debating which of two options is right, we stop asking who came up with those options, or why there should only be two.

The role of nuance in everyday life

Some either-or choices are real and perfectly fine: you can’t be both vegetarian and a meat-eater at the same meal, so you do have to make a clear-cut choice (sword optional ;). The point isn’t to deny that choices exist, but to spot false oppositions presented to us as the only two options.

A simple example: the controversies that set social media alight (a celebrity to "defend" or "cancel", a brand to be "for" or "against"). They rarely leave room for the full context, for nuance, or simply for the possibility of having mixed feelings — or no opinion at all. Yet having a nuanced view, changing your mind or refusing to pick a camp doesn’t make you indecisive or "unprincipled". Often, it means the opposite: you’ve taken the time to step back, see the bigger picture and arrive at a more considered view.

Taking ownership of our choices also means accepting that they can sometimes be hard to explain in a single sentence. A political belief, a shopping preference, a stance on a social issue: all of these can coexist with variations, doubts and changes of heart. That isn’t a weakness; it’s simply the sign of a mind that’s alive and growing.

This either-or thinking crops up in much more personal debates too: are you "team optimist" or "team realist", more introverted or extroverted, more organised or spontaneous? These labels can help us understand ourselves, but they become limiting the moment we treat them as fixed truths. Most of us move between the two depending on the day, our mood, our passing obsessions and who we’re with. Giving ourselves permission to vary is already a step out of a box we were barely even asked to choose. 

Love and sexuality: breaking free of constraints 

Romance is probably where binary thinking has taken the firmest hold (oh, the despair... good thing we’re here). For a long time, the love stories we were told followed a very specific formula: two suitors, a choice to make and staying loyal to that choice as the ULTIMATE, ONE AND ONLY proof of love. This formula teaches us, often without our realising it, that a person’s worth is measured by whether they’re "chosen", that desire is a competition and that love means making a stark choice.

This binary view also colours how we think about sexuality. For a long time, the dominant view offered two boxes (still alive and kicking, damn it): straight or gay, as though attraction could only fit into one or the other. Yet sexuality and romantic love are now understood more as a spectrum than as something with just two sides. Bisexuality, pansexuality, homosexuality, heterosexuality, asexuality, or any shade between these terms: every one of these experiences is valid, and none needs to be justified against a binary norm.

The same goes for how we love and experience intimacy: monogamy, open relationships, choosing to be single, forms of partnership that don’t fit a predetermined social definition. None of these arrangements is automatically "the right one". What matters is that the arrangement people choose reflects what they want to experience, with everyone fully informed and consenting, rather than following a model imposed from outside.

Asking ourselves "who presented me with these two options, and why only two?" often helps us realise we can ask what we truly want, rather than what we’re supposed to want.

This thinking naturally extends to pleasure and intimacy. We often grow up believing there’s a "right" and a "wrong" way to experience sexuality, a normal and an abnormal level of desire, an acceptable practice and a taboo one. Here too, reality is far richer than a line with two endpoints: everyone has their own relationship with desire, and it can change over time, with different partners and at different stages of life. There’s no standard to meet, only a habit of listening to yourself to nurture, without judgement or an imposed way of seeing things.

Enough with the sacred All or Nothing

Binary thinking even shapes how we judge a life. Career or family life, ambition or peace and quiet, "success" or "failure": these oppositions make it seem as though there are only two possible outcomes, when most real lives are more like a personal, ever-changing balance that we reinvent at every stage.

We might want a demanding career at one point in life, then slow down later. We might want a family without giving up our professional ambitions, or choose neither without that meaning something is missing. We might even change direction completely at forty, without that making the first chapter a failure.

What looks like hesitation or indecision is often simply a healthy refusal to squeeze ourselves into a box too narrow for who we really are.

Demands like "you must have started a family by 35" or "you must have made it in your career by 30" follow the same binary logic: on schedule or behind.

They ignore the fact that life paths aren’t linear or comparable, and that someone else’s timetable doesn’t have to become yours.

(I’m right there with you, my queens <3)

The only question we really need to ask 

What makes me think in terms of opposing sides, duality and either-or choices? 

Then, go with your gut and sketch out a third option. Tell us about it <3

Refusing to pick a side has never made you "indecisive". And even if you were, why would that be a problem? 

Tell us all about it in the comments, and see you soon, my wildflowers <3