Thursday, August 11, 2005
(1:31 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Some Thoughts on Love and Marriage
- Relationships work best when neither partner seriously suspects that he or she can "do better" at the time.
- If one partner falls for the other significantly harder, or otherwise seems to be "too" emotionally invested in the relationship (i.e., more invested than the other), then the other partner will take this as evidence that he or she can "do better," and discontent will set in.
- All romantic relationships are power struggles; a "better" partner is not so much one who better fits a socially-defined checklist of desirable attributes, but a more worthy opponent.
- To get married is to decide to be in a protracted power struggle with a particular person. Successful marriages represent a more or less uneasy truce.
- Failed marriages represent a breakdown of diplomacy, often due to a failure to foresee the probable conflicts that would arise in the course of a relationship. Such conflicts are most often predictable and abundantly clear to outsiders.
- Romantic love is a necessary social lubricant in terms of minimizing the partners' consciousness of conflict in the early stages of a relationship; obviously, however, it can be dangerous in excess.
