The School of Life

Once viewed as a kind of long dream that meant nothing and could be forgotten about as soon as it was over, childhood is now conceived of as a momentously consequential period in which the entire emotional disposition of a person will be formed and their chances of a mentally healthy life determined.

Parents become very good at not hearing the explicit words and listening instead to what the child means but doesn’t yet know how to say: ‘I’m lonely, in pain, or frightened’ – distress that then unfairly comes out as an attack on the safest, kindest, most reliable thing in the child’s world: the parent.

‘Whenever I have the strength in me to do so, I will imitate those who once loved me and take care of my partner as these figures cared for me. The task isn’t an unfair chore or a departure from the true nature of love. It is the only kind of love really worthy of that exalted word.’

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

It’s just a bit of fun

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

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

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,

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.

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.