
Perhaps you recognize the headline as one of the most-read recent articles from The New York Times. Too good not to steal (donβt worry, titles cannot be copyrighted)! Recently, its author the philosopher, Alain de Botton, was interviewed by Krista Tippett for her program βOn Being.β
It was actually a rebroadcast, reprised for the recent Valentineβs Day. The program is titled, βThe True Hard Work of Love and Relationships.β I thought it was awesome, and encourage you to listen to the entire thing. For today, I want to excerpt from the interview, adding a few comments of my own along the way. As a minister I have some experience in counseling couples about to take the plunge.
Love Is a Skill. AdB writes: βLove is something we have to learn and we can make progress with, and that itβs not just an enthusiasm, itβs a skill. And it requires forbearance, generosity, imagination, and a million things besides. The course of true love is rocky and bumpy at the best of times, and the more generous we can be towards that flawed humanity, the better chance weβll have of doing the true hard work of love.β
When performing weddings I would often say that love is more than a feeling, it is a commitment. But I prefer AdBβs description of it as a βskill.β While he too distances love from feelings alone β βitβs not just an enthusiasmβ β by describing love as a skill he makes it something we can learn, and something we can get better at. I find that both wise and encouraging.
Be Generous. More from AdB: βSo we have this ideal of what love is and then these very, very unhelpful narratives of love. And theyβre everywhere. Theyβre in movies and songs β and we mustnβt blame songs and movies too much.
βBut if you say to people, βLook, love is a painful, poignant, touching attempt by two flawed individuals to try and meet each otherβs needs in situations of gross uncertainty and ignorance about who they are and who the other person is, but weβre going to do our best,β thatβs a much more generous starting point. So the acceptance of ourselves as flawed creatures seems to me what love really is. Love is at its most necessary when we are weak, when we feel incomplete, and we must show love to one another at those points. So weβve got these two contrasting stories, and we get them muddled.β
AdB seems to have a doctrine of sin, referring often to us all as βflawed.β The romantic story of love has no room for that as the idea is that we find the βperfectβ person for us, fall in love and live happily ever after. Notice that story ends with the βfalling in loveβ part, which is really just the beginning.
Changing Our Lover. We start here with Krista Tippettβs question, followed by AdBβs response.
Tippett: βSomeone recently said to me β and Iβd be curious about how you would respond to this. It was a wise Jewish mother who had said to them, βMen marry women with the intention that they β with the idea that they will the stay the same. Women marry men with the idea that they will change.β Which is obviously a huge generalization, but gosh, it made a lot of sense to me, even in terms of my own life and in terms of what I see around me.β
de Botton: βI would argue that both genders want to change one another, and they both have an idea of who the lover βshouldβ be. And I think a useful exercise that sometimes psychologists level at feuding couples is they say things like, ‘If you could accept that your partner would never change, how would you feel about that?’
“Sometimes pessimism, a certain degree of pessimism can be a friend of love. Once we accept that actually itβs really very hard for people to be another way, weβre sometimes readier. We donβt need people to be perfect, is the good news. We just need people to be able to explain their imperfections to us in good time, before theyβve hurt us too much with them, and with a certain degree of humility. Thatβs already an enormous step.β
Like Tippett, I think the Jewish mother was onto something. And I appreciate AdBβs emphasis that it really is hard for people βto be another way.β Very wise. Not impossible (with God all things are possible!) but not easy either.
To ride myself out of this column, hereβs a song that seems to fit, one of our favorites. βTrue Love Travels on a Gravel Road,β by Nick Lowe (who like de Botton is British). Give it a listen.
Alain de Botton is a refreshingly original writer and thinker. I’m guessing that the interview you refer to is drawn largely from his invaluable “Essays in Love”. Some of his critics accuse him of stating the obvious. That may be one of the highest compliments that could be paid a philosopher. In your reading, you might enjoy his “Religion for Atheists”. Or maybe his ideas are a little too obvious.
In Boutain’s “The Art of Travel” he writes eloquently about traveling down the road not usually taken: the boredom of travel that is carefully avoided by romantic travel flacks. Perhaps there is some similarity to marriage.