# Relationships  Author:: The School of Life  ## AI-Generated Summary None ## Highlights > Since around 1750, we have been living in a highly distinctive era in the history of love that we can call Romanticism. Romanticism emerged as an ideology in Europe in the mid-18th century in the minds of poets, artists and philosophers, and it has now conquered the world, ([Location 54](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=54)) > Romanticism took marriage (hitherto seen as a practical and emotionally temperate union) and fused it together with the passionate love story to create a unique proposition: the lifelong passionate love marriage. ([Location 62](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=62)) > Romanticism elevated sex to the supreme expression of love. Frequent, mutually satisfying sex became the bellwether of the health of any relationship. ([Location 65](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=65)) > Romanticism proposed that true love must mean an end to all loneliness. The right partner would, it promised, understand us entirely, possibly without needing to speak to us. They would intuit our souls. ([Location 68](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=68)) > Romanticism believed that choosing a partner should be about letting oneself be guided by feelings, rather than practical considerations. ([Location 71](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=71)) > Romanticism has manifested a powerful disdain for practicalities and money. ([Location 79](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=79)) > Romanticism believes that true love should involve delighting in a lover in their every aspect. True love is synonymous with accepting everything about someone. The idea that one’s partner (or oneself) may need to change is taken to be a sign that the relationship is on the rocks; ‘you’re going to have to change’ is a last-ditch threat. ([Location 85](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=85)) > Romanticism has been a disaster for love. It is an intellectual and spiritual movement which has had a devastating impact on the ability of ordinary people to lead successful emotional lives. The salvation of love lies in overcoming a succession of errors within Romanticism. ([Location 91](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=91)) > We need to replace the Romantic template with a psychologically mature vision of love we might call Classical, which encourages in us a range of unfamiliar but hopefully effective attitudes: ([Location 117](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=117)) > It is normal that love and sex may not always belong together. –  Discussing money early on, upfront, in a serious way, is not a betrayal of love. –  Realising that we are rather flawed, and our partner is too, is of huge benefit to a couple in increasing the amount of tolerance and generosity in circulation. –  We will never find everything in another person, nor they in us, not because of some unique flaw, but because of the way human nature works. –  We need to make immense and often rather artificial-sounding efforts to understand one another; that intuition can’t get us to where we need to go. –  Spending two hours discussing whether bathroom towels should be hung up or can be left on the floor is neither trivial nor unserious, and there is a special dignity around laundry and time-keeping. ([Location 119](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=119)) > that central fixture of Romantic reverie: the right person. ([Location 143](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=143)) > we don’t fall in love first and foremost with those who care for us in ideal ways, we fall in love with those who care for us in familiar ways. Adult love emerges from a template of how we should be loved that was created in childhood and is likely to be entwined with a range of problematic compulsions that militate in key ways against our chances of growth. We may believe we are seeking happiness in love, but what we are really after is familiarity. ([Location 148](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=148)) > Psychoanalysis calls the process whereby we identify our partners ‘object choice’ – and recommends that we try to understand the factors semi-consciously governing our attractions in order to interrupt the unhealthier patterns that might be at play. ([Location 159](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=159))  ## New highlights added September 12, 2024 at 11:59 PM > It turns out that one of the keys to living successfully with another person can be to grasp just how much of a role the ‘transference’ of past fears and anxieties plays in all of our behaviours. ([Location 205](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=205)) > A sign of maturity is to accept with good grace that we might be involved in multiple transferences, and to commit oneself to rationally disentangling these, so that we will not need to keep making things tougher for everyone around us. The task of growing up is to realise with due humility the exaggerated dynamics we may be bringing to situations and to monitor ourselves more accurately and more critically so as to improve our capacity to judge and act on situations with greater fairness and neutrality. ([Location 277](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=277))  ## New highlights added September 13, 2024 at 9:59 AM > It is at this point of frustration that we can draw upon a very helpful idea: the Weakness of Strength. The essence of this idea is that a failing is frequently caused by an admirable quality. ([Location 368](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=368)) > A central premise of the Partner-As-Child theory is that it is not an aberration or unique failing of one’s partner that they retain a childish dimension. It’s a normal, inevitable, feature of all adult existence. You are not desperately unlucky to have hitched yourself to someone who is still infantile in many ways. Adulthood simply isn’t a complete state; what we call childhood lasts (in a submerged but significant way) all our lives. Therefore, some of the moves we execute with relative ease around children must forever continue to be relevant when we’re dealing with another grown-up. ([Location 410](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=410))  ## New highlights added September 14, 2024 at 11:42 PM > To love someone is, quite simply, according to Romantic philosophy, to love them as they are – without any wish to alter them. We must embrace the whole person to be worthy of the emotion we claim to feel. ([Location 522](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=522)) > For the Greeks, given that we are all very imperfect, part of what it means to deepen love is to want to teach – and to be taught. Two people should see a relationship as a constant opportunity to improve and be improved. When lovers teach each other uncomfortable truths, they are not giving up on love. They are trying to do something very true to love: which is to make their partners more loveable. ([Location 545](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=545)) > We should stop feeling guilty for simply wanting to change our partners, and we should never resent our partners for simply wanting to change us. Both these projects are, in theory, highly legitimate, even necessary. The desire to put one’s lover right is, in fact, utterly loyal to the essential task of love – to help another person to become the best version of themselves. ([Location 548](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=548)) > Rather than reading every lesson as an assault on our whole being, as a sign we are about to be abandoned or humiliated, we should take it for what it is: an indication, however flawed, that someone can be bothered – even if they aren’t yet breaking the news perfectly ([Location 567](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=567)) > Love is the discovery of harmony in some very specific areas – but to continue with this expectation is to doom hope to a slow death. Every relationship will necessarily involve the discovery of a huge number of areas of divergence. It will feel as if you are growing apart and that the precious unity you knew during the weekend in Paris is being destroyed. But what is happening should really be seen under a much less alarming description: disagreement is what happens when love succeeds and you get to know someone close up across the full range of their life. ([Location 637](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=637)) > The charm of a new person rests on the fact that we don’t yet know them well enough to understand how they too could drive us mad. ([Location 655](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=655)) > We can tell any stranger something reasonable and polite, but only in the presence of someone we really trust can we dare to be properly irrational and truly unkind. ([Location 687](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=687)) > The relief of honesty is at the heart of the feeling of being in love. A sense of mutual conspiracy underlies the touch of pity that every new couple feels for the rest of humanity. But this sharing of secrets sets up in our minds – and in our collective culture – a powerful and potentially problematic ideal: that if two people love one another, then they must always tell each other the truth about everything. ([Location 718](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=718)) > Withholding a truth may feel like an attack on the integrity of the couple. Yet unfettered frankness, in time, strikes a fatal blow. ([Location 726](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=726)) > Total openness is a magnificent, and very touching, ideal for a shared existence; in the early stages of a relationship it is often a powerful source of delight and of deepening intimacy. But there is a problem: we keep wanting to make this same demand as the relationship goes on. And yet, in order to be kind, and in order to sustain the relationship, it ultimately becomes necessary to keep a great many thoughts out of sight. ([Location 727](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=727)) > The ability to edit and hold back is a central quality of the good lover, operating in careful balance with – at other points – their capacity for candour and revelation. ([Location 737](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=737)) > A successful relationship always needs to be accompanied by a lot of explaining. This isn’t because we are especially strange, but simply because everyone emerges as puzzling and warped at close quarters. ([Location 761](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=761)) > Good communication means the capacity to give another person an accurate picture of what is happening in our emotional and psychological lives – and in particular, the capacity to describe our very darkest, trickiest and most awkward sides in such a way that others can understand and even sympathise with us. The good communicator has the skill to take their beloved, in a timely, reassuring and gentle way, without melodrama or fury, into some of the trickiest areas of their personality and warn them of what is there (like a tour guide to a disaster zone), explaining what is problematic in such a way that the beloved will not be terrified, can come to understand, can be prepared and may perhaps forgive and accept. ([Location 808](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=808)) > here are just some of the unpalatable truths that stir in our minds: –  It’s very rare to maintain sexual interest in only one person, however much one loves them, beyond a certain time. –  It’s entirely possible to love one’s partner and regularly want to have sex with strangers, and frequently types with nothing particularly to recommend them. –  One can be kind, respectable and democratic and at the same time want to flog, hurt and humiliate a sexual partner, or be on the receiving end of very rough treatment. –  It’s highly normal to have bisexual and incestuous fantasies – and to want to explore extreme taboos involving illegal, violent, hurtful and unsanitary scenarios. –  It may be easier to be excited by someone one dislikes or thinks nothing of than by someone one loves. ([Location 959](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=959)) > We might in the abstract identify two clear-cut types of people – let’s call them the Loyalist and Libertine – who represent extreme views on what monogamy or exploration might mean in a relationship. To the Loyalist, love is intimately tied to sex, so any adventures with another person (whether by them or their partner) must signal the death of love. It is simply impossible at once to declare love and a wish to have sex with a third party. To the Libertine, on the other hand, sex and love are radically distinct entities with an almost accidental, and partial, connection. A fling (or a series of them) can’t say very much at all about whether one loves a partner – or, indeed, doesn’t. ([Location 991](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=991)) > The painful fact is there is no answer to the Libertine-Loyalist dilemma, if what one means by an ‘answer’ is a cost-free settlement in which no party suffers a loss, and in which every positive element can coexist with every other, without either causing or sustaining grievous damage. There is wisdom on both sides; and therefore each side must involve loss. ([Location 1025](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=1025)) > There is, in a sense, only one answer of sorts, and it can be called the Melancholy Position, because it confronts the sad truth that in certain key areas of human existence, there simply are no good solutions. ([Location 1027](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=1027)) > The point being that around many of life’s deepest themes, we just have no ideal option that represents a path to happiness. ([Location 1042](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=1042)) > We invariably and naturally equate genuine relationships with lifelong relationships. ([Location 1098](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=1098)) > When two people know they don’t own one another, they are extremely careful to earn each other’s respect on a daily basis. Knowing someone could leave us at any time isn’t only grounds for insecurity, it’s a constant catalyst for tender appreciation. ([Location 1115](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=1115)) > When it isn’t forever, we can let differences lie. If the journey is to be long, absolute alignment can feel key. But when the time is short, we are readier to surrender our entrenched positions, to be unthreatened by novelties and dissonances. ([Location 1118](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=1118)) > Long-term relationships reward some qualities – especially the administrative ones – but obscure others, for example, those related to skills at having interesting speculative conversations about ethics or psychology late into the night. It should be no insult to determine that some people simply won’t be able to shine in the conditions of long-term love, ([Location 1131](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=1131)) > But if we allow imaginative space for short-term love, then an ending may signal a deeper loyalty, not to the setting up of a home and domestic routines, but to transitory pleasures; we’ll walk away with a fair and generous sense of all that has been preserved and enhanced by the relationship not being forced to last forever. ([Location 1143](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=1143)) ### 19 Classical vs Romantic > the labels Romantic and Classical usefully bring into focus some of the central themes of how we think about love. ([Location 1148](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=1148)) > 1. Intuition vs Analysis ([Location 1150](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=1150)) > 2. Spontaneity vs Education ([Location 1161](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=1161)) > 3. Honesty vs Politeness ([Location 1169](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=1169)) > The Classical person reveres politeness as a very important lid that suppresses what might destroy us. ([Location 1172](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=1172)) > 4. Idealism vs Realism ([Location 1177](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=1177)) > 5. Earnestness vs Irony ([Location 1188](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=1188)) > Ironic humour is a standard recourse for the Classically minded lover because it emerges from the constant collision between how one would like things to be – and how it seems they in fact are. These types appreciate quite a bit of gallows humour around their relationships. ([Location 1194](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=1194)) > 6. The Rare vs The Everyday ([Location 1196](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=1196)) > 7. Purity vs Ambivalence ([Location 1202](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=1202)) > The Classical person takes the view that very few things, and no people (especially themselves or their partner), are either wholly good or entirely bad. ([Location 1206](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=1206)) > Both Romantic and Classical orientations have important truths to impart. Neither is wholly right or wrong. They need to be balanced. ([Location 1209](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=1209)) > But because a good relationship requires a judicious balance of both, at this point in history, it might be the Classical attitude whose distinctive claims and wisdom we need to listen to most intently. It is a mode of approaching life which is ripe for rediscovery. ([Location 1210](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=1210)) ### 20 Better Love Stories > The Classical story accepts that no one ever fully understands anyone else; that there must be secrets, that there will be loneliness, that there must be compromise. It believes that we have to learn how to sustain good relationships, that love is not just a chance endowment of nature, that love is a skill, not a feeling. ([Location 1262](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=1262)) > We will know that we are finally ready for love when we have stopped telling ourselves the wrong stories and when some of the following requirements are in place: ([Location 1265](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=1265)) > 1. When we have given up on perfection ([Location 1266](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=1266)) > 2. When we despair of being understood ([Location 1271](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=1271)) > 3. When we realise we are crazy ([Location 1276](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=1276)) > 4. When we are happy to be taught and calm about teaching ([Location 1280](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=1280)) > 5. When we realise we’re not compatible ([Location 1285](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=1285)) > What we should really be looking for is not someone whose interests coincide perfectly with our own (such a person does not exist), but one with whom we can handle disagreement and divergence in comparatively generous and astute ways. ([Location 1288](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=1288)) > The Romantic vision of love has been unfortunate: it sets up impossibly high hopes. Judged by that standard, any actual relationship will seem like a failure, thus promoting separation and break-ups. We need to replace the Romantic vision with a more candid, realistic view of what ‘good enough’ relationships are actually like, with all their normal stresses and sorrows. And we should provide ourselves with tools, in the form of ideas, stories and jokes, that help us face the ordinary trials of shared life in a slightly more intelligent and less panicked way. ([Location 1291](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0B2ZHFDB6&location=1291))