"If you could accept that your partner would never change, how would you feel about that?" (Alain de Botton, 2017)

This Valentine's Day, let's use our time to reflect upon love as an active process of understanding and being understood. The wonderful writer-philosopher Alain de Botton proposes that our notion of love is flawed – that we expect love to be like in the movies – romance, passion and excitement. But the movies only show us the process of falling in love – what next? Does romance and passion keep the dishes washed, the clothes ironed and the bills paid? What sustains good long-term relationships and keeps the love alive?

Like the title suggests, this isn't going to be an article with "10 tips to rekindle the romance". Today we are going to ask ourselves some fundamental questions that turn the spotlight on us. It is very easy to point blame at our partners, accusing them of not fulfilling our littlest whims and desires. And yet, when we take a step back to consider why we were so disappointed, so humiliated, so dissatisfied, if we were really honest with ourselves and dug deep under the surface, we would come up with answers that have nothing to really do with our partners at all. Answers like wanting our loneliness taken care of or our feelings of inadequacy pushed aside by our partners. And these things – whether they're inadequacy or loneliness or inferiority or insecurity or fatigue or anxiety – they're part of the suffering of life. They're universal questions, just asked in different ways at different times. And we as human beings expect our partners to not be as flawed as us and to be able to take care of these needs immediately and completely, and then we wonder why we are let down so easily – and we come to the conclusion that it must be their inadequacy, their inability.

And you know? It is! Wouldn't it be revolutionary then, if instead of picture-perfect fantasy stories about two people falling in love and living happily ever after, movies and songs dwelled a little longer on the happily ever after portion instead. What we may get, instead of romantic ideals, is a version of life that we can relate to – with individuals who are inconsistent, damaged and imperfect. People who are struggling to be met halfway, two individuals who come from different walks of life, who make a decision to be together and to love each other.  That phrase – to love – is a verb. It indicates activity, something in motion – an experience we can will into action. Myths like "if I can't feel the love, how do I know I love my partner?" that try to pigeon-hole love as only a static feeling are exactly that – myths. And anyone in a relationship or married for longer than a few months can tell you that.

Indeed the notion of romantic love seems to be poles apart from the notion of parental love. But as de Botton says, when a child throws a tantrum and screams "I hate you" in the middle of the street, we give it the benefit of doubt – tired, hungry, had a long day. And yet when it comes to our adult partners, we take these tantrums at face value, not bothering to investigate the reasons and the message behind this aggressive, unreasonable behavior. So really, where we can extend a spirit of generosity and kindness to a child, which only serves to deepen the trust and affection, it is worth asking why we can't seem to do that as often with our partners.

This brings us to what we can realistically begin to do to help ourselves be better at love. Maybe we could admit first to ourselves, and then to our partners, that we crave understanding, and yet know that for a large part of our inner lives, we may never be understood the way we want. So maybe the disappointment we feel when we are with our partners who don't alleviate our pain is simply because nobody can lighten that suffering, but the process of trying can help. Perhaps we can acknowledge first to ourselves and then to our partners that we are imperfect individuals who might find it really hard to change. Once we admit that about ourselves, we may feel more empathy for our partners when we make huge demands upon their character, and perhaps recognize that the best we can do with each other is to explain our flaws as best as we can and to keep trying – because what is love but trying to understand and trying to be understood – by our partners and by our own selves. 

References:

Tippett, K & de Botton, A. (2017) The True Hard Work Of Love And Relationships. On Being (Podcast). Retrieved from: http://onbeing.org/programs/alain-de-botton-the-true-hard-work-of-love-and-relationships/

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