The Course of Love

It’s a well-known thesis: the people we are attracted to as adults bear a marked resemblance to the people we most loved as children.

hat genuine love should involve a constant attempt to interpret with maximal generosity what might be going on, at any time, beneath the surface of difficult and unappealing behavior.

Our shyness, awkwardness, and confusion endear (as they did when we were children) rather than generate sarcasm or complaint; the trickier sides of us are interpreted solely through the filter of compassion.

Romanticism is clear on this score: true love should involve an acceptance of a partner’s whole being. It is this fundamental commitment to benevolence that makes the early months of love so moving. Within the new relationship, our vulnerabilities are treated with generosity. Our shyness, a

price that Rabih must pay for relying on his wife’s fiscal talent is having to endure certain associated downsides as well.

objectively insane and profoundly unjust way—responsible for everything that happens to us, for good or ill. Therein lies the peculiar and sick privilege of love.

hat we get angry with those we are sure will best tolerate us for blaming them.

common of all the presumptions of love is that the person to whom we have pledged ourselves is not just the center of our emotional existence but is also, as a result—and yet in a very strange,

We don’t need to be constantly reasonable in order to have good relationships; all we need to have mastered is the occasional capacity to acknowledge with good grace that we may, in one or two areas, be somewhat insane.

m a bit of a bitch when you go away. I seem to be trying to punish you for leaving me, which is ridiculous, because you’re only trying to pay off our mortgage. Forgive me. I’m a bit of a nut job sometimes.”