Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person
Alain convinced me that searching for love from a place of fear was not a good beginning to any love story. It meant motivations were often selfish – to avoid loneliness; to outsource happiness – and would lead in the wrong direction. As the psychiatrist M. Scott Peck wrote, ‘If being loved is your goal, you will fail to achieve it.’
Natasha Lunn • Conversations on Love: with Philippa Perry, Dolly Alderton, Roxane Gay, Stephen Grosz, Esther Perel, and many more
During courtship neither person is yet sure of the other, but each tries to win the other. Both are alive, attractive, interesting, even beautiful—inasmuch as aliveness always makes a face beautiful. Neither yet has the other; hence each one’s energy is directed to being, i.e., to giving to and stimulating the other. With the act of marriage the si
... See moreErich Fromm • To Have or To Be? (Continuum Impacts)
The rule should be “whatever you do, don’t marry the wrong person,” but society frowns much more upon a 37-year-old single person than it does an unhappily married 37-year-old with two children.
Tim Urban • How to Pick Your Life Partner
The originators of the idea of free choice in love certainly imagined that their bold suggestion would bring to an end the sort of unhappy relationships previously brokered by parents and society. But our obedience to our instincts has, very often, proved to be its own disaster. Respecting the special feelings we get around certain people in nightc
... See moreAlain De Botton • The School of Life: An Emotional Education
Of course, we rarely approach relationships with such wisdom. Instead, we spend years failing to fully commit to any one relationship—either by finding a reason to call things off as soon as a serious liaison starts to look likely or by only halfheartedly showing up for whatever relationship we’re in. Or, alternatively, in a pattern that every expe... See more