For a long time I have wanted to review the book ‘Can Love last? The fate of romance over time’ by Stephen A
Mitchell, an American psychoanalytic theorist.
It is the best book on the subject I have ever read, and one that made
immediate sense to me.
The basic premise of the book is, that romance doesn’t die
of its own accord when faced with the realities of life as a couple, but rather
that it is willfully destroyed, because one or both of the lovers can’t cope
with the disturbing intensity of true romance over an extended period of time.
I think this disturbing quality of romantic passion is also the
reason why parents have always been so keen to get their children married to a
safe partner, preferably of their own choosing; as most romances depicted in literature and film show, love is
extremely disruptive and inconvenient to society.
People in love are notoriously irresponsible, selfish, and
unreliable, which is why they are bad employees, undutiful children, and irritating
parents. But people in love are also,
equally notoriously, gloriously alive and deliriously happy, which is why we all
envy people in love and like to be around them.
People commonly try to reconcile their desire for romance with
their need for a stable lifestyle by watching romantic movies and reading
sentimental novels, and then go back to their prosaic lives, not entirely
satisfied but content for the time being.
Every now and then they rebel against their passionless existence with a
fling or by finding a new partner, but as soon as the dust has settled they
will again try to choke all passion out of their new relationship, and repeat
the cycle of passion/settling down/boredom/separation.
This attitude is of course not confined to love, but
often applied to all aspects of life. We
do what we can to make life as safe as possible, and when we have achieved this
goal we rebel and do something dangerous and exciting and, usually, incredibly stupid.
I have always felt this rather unfortunate. My approach to life is, by all means make it
as safe as possible, but realise that much of the joy of life lies in the
thrill and excitement of entering new and frightening territory. I love to go out there and have adventures,
but always make sure I am well prepared, figuratively speaking, with a knapsack full of food, warm clothes, a good map, a rope just in case, and a mobile telephone for emergencies. To live life to the full, sometimes you have to throw it into the air and see where it lands - but make sure you don't throw it anywhere near a really dangerous place, like a desert or ocean!
This goes for romantic love, too. There are no certainties, no guarantees of a
happy ending. But if one is well prepared,
and judiciously plans ahead, one needn’t settle for the safe predictability of
the devoted boy next door, but can venture out and search for the true love of
one’s life.
But be warned – true love isn’t for cowards, nor for starry
eyed optimists. If you want it to last,
you need to have the sharp eyes of a sniper, the cunning of a politician, the patience
of Jacob, and the fortitude of Job – paradoxically, that is the only way you
can experience and safeguard the innocent joyous delight of true love, the joy
that was yours when you were a child, before the cruel reality of the world
intruded and crushed your happy optimism and belief in the goodness of life.
Illustrations, are, as usual, via an Hermes scarf. This one is called Amour and is by Annie
Faivre. It is a jacquard – notice the
bees that are woven into the fabric? In
case you notice the difference in colours, these are actually photos of two
scarves – same design, different colour-ways.
Happy post St Valentine’s Day! (sorry I am a bit late)
I cannot recommend the book ‘Can Love last? The fate of romance over time’ by Stephen A
Mitchell enough, and paste below, after the photos, a selection of quotes, as a
taster.
Authentic romance is hard to find and even harder to
maintain. It easily degrades into
something else, much less captivating, much less enlivening, such as sober
respect or purely sexual diversion, predictable companionship, or hatred,
guilt, and self-pity. (p 27)
We will find again and again that it is not that romance
itself has a tendency to become degraded, but that we expend considerable
effort degrading it. And we are
interested in degrading it for very good reasons. (p 28)
The need for a wholly secure attachment is powerful for both
children and adults. When patients
complain of dead and lifeless marriages, it is often possible to show them how
precious the deadness is to them, how carefully maintained and insisted upon,
how the very mechanical, predictable quality of lovemaking serves as a bulwark
against the dread of surprise and unpredictability. Love, by its very nature, is not secure; we
keep wanting to make it so. (p49)
The unconscious contract that parallels many legal marriage
contracts is the agreement to pretend to be permanently, unalterably,
impossibly bound – an agreement that creates the necessity for a carefully
guarded, perpetually measured distance.
Jacques Lacan captured vividly the mirage of degraded romance in the
service of illusory security: ‘Love is
giving something you don’t have to someone you don’t know.’ (p50)
It is common for couples with a vibrant sex life to fear
marriage. Before marriage couples often
experience themselves as free, childlike, adventurous, and spontaneous. In marriage, they seek stability and
permanence. They identify themselves as ‘adults’
now, in a static institution. And they
attribute the deadening that comes with stasis to the institution of marriage,
rather than their own conflictual longings for certainty and permanence. Total safety, predictability, and oneness,
permanently established, quickly becomes stultifying. (p50/1)
Nietzsche suggested that our lives are transitory and
illusory. We can attribute to ourselves
and out productions an illusory permanence, like a deluded builder of
sandcastles who believes his creation is eternal. Or we can be defeated by our transience,
unable to build, paralysed as we wait for the tide to come in. Nietzsche envisions the tragic man or woman, living
life to the fullest, as one who builds sandcastles passionately, all the time
aware of the coming tide. (p55)
The lover builds the castles of romance as if they would
last forever, knowing full well they are fragile, transitory structures. Those boring, sturdy stone castles over there
will last forever. (p55)
Romantic passion requires a surrender a surrender to a depth
of feeling that should come with guarantees.
Unfortunately there are no guarantees.
Life and love are inevitably difficult and risky, and to control the
risk we all struggle to locate and protect sources for both safety and
adventure. (p55)
What is alluring in the other may be the opportunity of
making contact, at a safe distance, with the parts of ourselves we have
suppressed. (p82)
The great irony of many relationships is that the quality
for which we chose a person is often just a psychic defence against its
opposite quality. Eg, the partner
selected for his seemingly impressive stability may have adopted this behaviour
trait as a defence against a terrible internal chaos. Or a woman selected for her liveliness may be
covering up an underlying depression.
(p83)
[I note, in my experience, people who genuinely possess a
certain characteristic often seem to have it to a lesser extent than others who
only pretends to have it. This is
because when you genuinely are something, you don’t need to constantly project
this, but if you are only pretending to be something you must project this permanently,
and to a high level. For example, a
transvestite who pretends to be a woman will usually exhibit more of the ‘markers
of femininity’ – make-up, skirt, large bosom (fake), long hair, etc., than a
real woman who feels no need to prove her womanhood.
Similarly, many a woman looking for a ‘strong man’ to
protect her will fall for a guy who only pretends to be strong because of an
insecurity he is secretly ashamed of, rather than for a genuinely strong man
who doesn’t feel the need to prove his masculinity all the time.]
Erotic passion destabilises one’s sense of self. When we find someone intensely arousing who
makes possible unfamiliar experiences of ourselves and an otherness we find
captivating, we are drawn into the disorientating loopiness of self/other. We tend to want to control these experiences
and the ones who inspire them. Thus
emotional connection tends to degrade into strategies for false security that
suffocate desire. And sexual excitement
tends to degrade into those elements common to all perversions – collapsed expectations
and omnipotence, which obliterate possibilities for love. Sustaining the
unstable tension of romance and regaining romantic states over time in the same
relationship require a struggle to resist those inevitable efforts to control
unsettling experiences. (p92)
Romance in relationships is not cultivated through a
resolution of tensions. Instead it
requires two people who are fascinated by the ways in which, individually and
together, they generate forms of life they hope they can count on. It entails a tolerance of the fragility of
those hopes, woven together of realities and fantasies, and an appreciation of
the ways in which, in the rich density of contemporary life, realities often
become fantasy and fantasies often become realities. (p201)
