A collection of love letters from Ayn Rand to Nathaniel Branden

May 13th, 1953

Wonderful Nathaniel, I'm writing with the very best news!

My husband, Frank has conceded to the unassailable might of my elevated, rational mind! He has admitted utter congruence with my proposal and has told me directly in no uncertain terms that he willingly condones a sexual relationship between you and I.

At first I thought Frank hadn't the mental gifts to follow my line of reason... but it is a testament to my own formidable intellect that even a simple man like Frank could eventually understand my infallible logic.

It helps that at his core Frank truly believes in objectivism. Even with his lesser brain, he understands that man's truest, most heroic purpose is to pursue his own happiness!

After meeting on the basics, I simply explained that a sexual relationship with you would allow me to more entirely pursue the moral absolute of my own happiness. At first he did not understand. But I explained: as much as I value him for his honesty and his spirited commitment to the moral perfection of objectivism, I have yet to experience the fully impassioned joy of a sexual relationship with someone who truly embodies the virtue of reason!

When I told Frank that I have never been physically intimate with one as intellectually gifted as you he nodded. He seemed a little hurt, but there was no way he could argue against my appeal to the facts.

I explained it wasn't about him, so his feelings didn't really matter. I explained that this venture was not intended to harm him and that standing in the way of my pursuit of individualist happiness with you would be a moral failing on his part.

Frank knows his gifts run out where yours begin. He is honest enough to admit that compared to you he is an intellectual midget, and after making that concession the irrefutable path of reason carries us to this absolute: it would be a wonderfully freeing and a wonderfully objectivist act for you and I to entertain an honest, unabashed sexual relationship.

What a brave man my husband! He may not be the cleverest among us, but what he lacks in mental faculties he makes up for in emotional sturdiness. Imagine how formidable he'd be if he were as brilliant as you and I!

Well, I know you'll be as pleased by the good news as I am. We may soon commence our sexual union, with the fully willing foreknowledge of my husband!

All that remains is to bring your wife onboard.

I hope that you have had as much luck with Barbara. Though she is dim like Frank, I will always consider her a friend. I truly hope that she can reach the same conclusion as he did.

It might be hard for her, not to feel the impulsiveness of jealousy. But I believe her commitment to objectivism is sincere! If you explain to her your own desire to be physically intimate with someone of my intellectual caliber I believe she will concede as Frank did.

Yours in moral truth,

-Ayn R

***

January 22, 1954

Wonderful Nathaniel!

What is love?

I know what it is, as do you!

Now that we have enjoyed the freedom to experience one another-- to pursue pleasure at one another's hands-- we both know.

Love is not self-sacrifice, as those socialist fools would have us believe.

Love is pleasure-- and I don't mean the basest pleasure of physical orgasm (Though what a joy that is!) I mean the grander, deeper pleasure of freely pursuing the best value one can attain! Truly, love at it's purest and noblest is an expression of self worth. I know I have often cheapened my sense of worth by giving myself sexually to Frank! While I still stand in admiration of his spirited commitment to objectivism and to me, I am fully awake now to the reality that I am worth far more than him!

But with you, wonderful Nathaniel, with you I feel the exultation of measured and reciprocated worth! How freeing to experience the raw physical, emotional, and intellectual pleasures of sexual exchange with one whom I can call an equal!

Poor Frank, it's clear why I never felt fulfilled with him. I could only exist on a pedestal to him. He might not be inadequate as compared to the average intellect, but how could he stand in honest company with me? You said it yourself, and I know it to be true: I am an intellectual giant. My mind is so profound that my lines of reason are secure and unshakable.

It's not Frank's fault, but he's not on my level.

And so, trying to love him I shamed myself. I devalued myself and cheapened myself. But with you Nathaniel, I am affirmed. In copulating with you I open myself to the closest possible communion with one of like mind!

Ah, to have intercourse with an intellectual equal!

What is love, Nathaniel?

That is love! To value myself highly enough to engage in an impassioned physical exchange with someone of the highest value! That is love, and that is objective virtue.

Think how much happier all of mankind would be if men and women alike refused to cheapen themselves by associating with their inferiors.

I say this now, there is no greater exercise of objectivism than to ruthlessly pursue the highest value. What happiness, what pleasure, could be greater than this?

And isn't it fun? No, that is to base. Isn't it GOOD and right and just that we should achieve such pleasure with each other?

I feel so satisfied Nathaniel, to know that I have achieved such pleasures with an equal. I feel no compulsion, not even the barest impulse, to experience Frank again.

Indeed, this is love that I feel for you!

Love is not selfless, only communist brutes and fools who believe in altruism would shout such idiotic claims. Love, true and noble love, is utterly selfish! I take pleasure in being with you, and that is love!

I value myself highly enough to take pleasure with you, and that is love.

My emotions are flawlessly tempered by the sterling faculties of my reasoning mind, and every fiber of my mind is an agreement with my body!

I can hardly wait until we meet again-- I will pursue my own happiness through proximity and primal impact with your perfect mind and your body.

Our love is like the heart of unfettered capitalism. I will buy your body with mine, and you will buy my body with yours. We will buy each other with ourselves-- and that is love!

Isn't it wonderful to get what we want, by our own virtues?

Yours in the moral superiority of selfish love,

Ayn R

***

August 8, 1962

Wonderful Nathaniel!

Being with you these past few years has given me such fanciful thoughts. I never thought myself an optimist, but I'm entertaining romantic fantasies of a future where all of mankind has what we have-- pure, unabashed commitment to the highest value.

Will you fantasize with me? Next time we are intimate... Will you whisper in my ear about a society that fully embraces our objectivism? I want to feel your breath on my neck, as I wrap myself around you. I want to hear you whisper the sweet possibilities of man's future as you enter me. Tell me a story where the poor languish and the men and women of high value pursue their own happiness with unbridled vigor and productivity. I want to close my eyes and picture it, while we glory in each other's bodies.

I want to picture capitalism at its grandest, I want to picture society flourishing at the fingertips of intellectual gods like you and I.

I want to picture heroically selfish men and women pursuing their own happiness, utterly free from the fetters and bonds of the deluded morals of popularism.

I want to feel you inside of me Nathan, while we imagine that world together-- a world where people of value do whatever they want....

Just as we shall be doing whatever we want, with each other.

Isn't it almost intoxicating? to know that you and I are fully embodying the virtues of objectivism together?

Let us dream of the meager-minded masses begging us for support and relief. And let us imagine: us standing proud in our refusal to contribute any of our hard earned resource to their welfare! Let's fantasize about beggars spurned before us, and the poor suffering not as a consequence of bad luck but as a consequence of their laziness!

I can imagine us laughing in their starving faces, ah what a joy that would be. I'm getting moist in my nethers just thinking about it! Ah, Nathan if you were here you would clearly smell the odors of my arousal.

Nathan, wonderful, valuable Nathan, this is what you do to me! You allow me to dare to dream of full and complete satisfaction! Not only the satisfaction of the successful pursuit of our own material happiness, but also the proud social comparison to the shallow minded beasts who are too stupid or lazy to take their own wellbeing into their own hands.

When you are inside of me I cannot help but believe that one day we will bear witness to the utopia that would surely thrive, if only we were to allow capitalism to function without the restraints of sentimental fools and bleeding hearts.

Yours in the unabashed pursuit of selfishly moral happiness,

Ayn R

***

December 24th, 1968

Nathaniel, I cannot believe you did this to me. I heard, oh yes, I heard

about her.

That little slut.

You have strayed from me over the years, and why? To fornicate with a lesser woman now?

I am appalled. I am disgusted.

I am livid.

I am dry as the desert and just as barren of any lingering love for you!

Once I thought you were a paragon of objectivism, for embracing a full relationship with me.

Once I thought we were equals. But clearly, I'm your better!

You cheapened yourself by pursuing one of the lowly.

This is not you claiming objective happiness. This is not you taking reciprocation of your own worth. This is you, demeaning-- no, soiling yourself-- by engaging in brute sex with a vapid, witless model!

What does she have beyond her looks? Nothing!

That is why you kept your affair a secret! You were ashamed of the truth you know in your heart! Where our sexual relationship was an exercise in beauty and nobility and truth, your relationship with her is the sacrifice and destruction of the ideals you claimed to understand!

I thought you to be a prime example of the intellectually and morally superior man! I thought you to be very near the archetype of an objectivist hero. But here you are, the real you: a chimp in a suit. You do not care about your own happiness! If you did, you wouldn't contaminate your mind with any sort of relationship with such a dim, shallow woman.

I regret ever opening my body or my mind to your wanton pursuits.

You disgust me, you immoral swine!

It's clear to me now, you are just as dim as the average filth on the street.

Your intellectual and moral superior,

Ayn Rand

***

Authors note:

Seriously, fuck Ayn Rand.

She's terrible.

These letters are pure fiction, but they're based on her real extramarital affair with Nathaniel Branden-- whom she later slandered after learning that he'd started a new sexual relationship with someone else.

I've known unbearable narcissists in real life, and somehow Ayn Rand bothers me more. It's her pseudo-intellectual god complex and her disdain for the poor alongside her manifestos that attempt to moralize greed and glorify the rot of capitalism....

Here's a song that reminds me of her:

and an opinion piece (not mine) that dismantles Rand's objectivism more directly: