The New York Time – Sunday Review – Opinion – Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person – By Alain de Botton – May 28, 2016
A client sent this article to me, reporting that, as he read it, he was sure that I had written it. On oath, it was not me. But, it does sound a lot like something I would write. While its tone is contrived and pessimistic, its message is profoundly optimistic.
Alain de Botton proposes that what we really seek in a love relationship is familiarity. True! This is the fuel that drives the boat. By the time we reach adulthood, our experience of “love” is vastly entrenched in complicated associations.
“We are looking to recreate, within our adult relationships, the feelings we knew so well in childhood. The love most of us will have tasted early on was often confused with other, more destructive dynamics: feelings of wanting to help an adult who was out of control, of being deprived of a parent’s warmth or scared of his anger, of not feeling secure enough to communicate our wishes. How logical is it that we should as grown-ups find ourselves rejecting certain candidates for marriage not because they are wrong but because they are too right.”
The fun news, however, is that a happy life, rich with compatibility, is an achievement of love; it must not be a precondition.
So be courageous, go forth, marry (or domestic partner), and know you’re on the ride of a lifetime of discovery, hopefully with a shot or two of joy.