The School of Life

Anyone we might marry could be wrong for us - even just a little bit. We know that perfection is not in the cards. And yet, errors of deep-seated incompatibility in married couples seem to occur regularly. 

Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person

Kenna Marcelo

The peaks of life tend to be brief. Happiness doesn’t come in year-long blocks.

We shouldn’t, therefore, blame our lovers for a dereliction of duty in failing to interpret and grasp our internal workings. They were not tragically inept. They simply couldn’t understand who we were and what we needed – which is wholly normal. No one properly understands, and can therefore fully sympathise with, anyone else.

𝓬𝓱𝓮𝓻𝓲𝓮

One of the greatest privileges of being on one's own is the flattering illusion that one is, in truth, really quite an easy person to live with.

We need to know the intimate functioning of the psyche of the person we're planning to marry. We need to know their attitudes to, and stance on, authority, humiliation, introspection, sexual intimacy, money, children, ageing, fidelity and a hundred things besides. This knowledge won't be available via a standard chat. We need a level of insight currently generally only available to psychological professionals at the PhD level.

One is never in a good frame of mind to choose a partner rationally when remaining single has come to feel unbearable. We have to be utterly at peace with the prospect of many years of solitude in order to have any chance of forming a good relationship. Or we'll love no longer being single rather more than we love the partner who spared us being so.

But maturity is founded on an active sense of one's own folly. One is out of control for long periods; one has failed to master one's past; one projects unhelpfully; one is permanently anxious. One is, to put it mildly, an idiot.

No one properly understands, and can therefore fully sympathise with, anyone else.

In another life, I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you...

The Romantic person instinctively sees marriage in terms of emotions. But what a couple actually get up to together over a lifetime has much more in common with the workings of a small business. They must draw up work rosters, clean, chauffeur, cook, fix, throw away, hire, fire, reconcile and budget.

Rather than some notional idea of perfect complementarity, it is the capacity to tolerate difference that is the true marker of the 'right' person. Compatibility is an achievement of love; it shouldn't be its precondition.

Fred Rivett

There are toys in the living room, pieces of chicken under the table, and no time to talk. Everyone is always tired. This too is love.

A decent book with humorous moments and brings a welcomed reality to what long term love looks like, but not one I’d jump to recommend as I don’t agree with a fair amount of its conclusions as we approach things from a different worldview.