Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person

Whenever more casual relationships threaten to reveal the ‘difficult’ side of our natures, we tend to blame the partner – and call it a day. As for our friends, they predictably don’t care enough about us to have any motive to probe our real selves. They only want a nice evening out. Therefore, we end up blind to the awkward sides of our natures. On our own, when we’re furious, we don’t shout, as there’s no one there to listen – and therefore we overlook the true, worrying strength of our capacity for fury. Or we work all the time without grasping, because there’s no one calling us to come for dinner, how we manically use our jobs to gain a sense of control over life – and how we might cause hell if anyone tried to stop us labouring. At night, all we’re aware of is how sweet it would be to cuddle with someone, but we have no opportunity to face up to the intimacy-avoiding side of us that would start to make us cold and strange if ever it felt we were too deeply committed to someone. One of the greatest privileges of being on one’s own is the flattering illusion that one is, in truth, really quite an easy person to live with.

With such a poor level of understanding of our characters, no wonder we aren’t in any position to know who we should be looking out for.

we all deserve untold sympathy for our struggles. We are trying to do something enormously difficult without the bare minimum of support necessary.

This – rather than a vow never to have sex with another human again – should be the relevant test for getting married.

One is ready to get married when two very difficult things are in place: one is ready to believe in one’s partner’s genuine capacity to separate love and sex. And at the same time, one is ready to believe in one’s partner’s stubborn inability to keep love and sex apart.

They should above all never try to persuade their partner that it isn’t right to be jealous or that jealousy is unnatural, ‘bad’ or a bourgeois construct.

The adulterer has to be ready to honour and forgive the partner’s extreme capacity for jealousy, and so must, as far as is possible, resist the urge to have sex with other people,

Many things about us make little sense – and yet have to be respected.

Someone is properly ready for marriage when they are ready to behave maturely around betraying and being betrayed.

It’s just a bit of fun

sex doesn’t have to be part of love. It can be quick and meaningless,