This is in the Style section. It's part of their "Modern Love" column. This type of soft journalism had always been part of newspapers. If you don't like it,

This is in the Style section. It's part of their "Modern Love" column. This type of soft journalism had always been part of newspapers. If you don't like it, don't read those sections. I have a subscription to the NYT and their news in my RSS feed and this is a fraction of the content they publish.