My name is Alain de Botton. I'm a philosopher, psychotherapist, and founder of the School of Life
Chapter 1. Our Destructive Romantic Culture We know in theory that love matters a lot. It's in every pop song, it's the center of most religions
We sometimes lose sight of what that word actually means. It's really about connection
And it is one of the most beautiful and one of the most complicated of all phenomena
Even though we think we've been around on this planet for a long time trying to figure things out
I'd say we were still at the dawn collectively of making sense of this phenomenon we call love
And it's no surprise that most people will go to their deathbeds thinking
not quite sure I've figured that side of life out. at least many of us, will still be grappling with some of the complexities of love by the time time
runs out on us. The most central kind of love that people are obsessed about, concerned about
is romantic love. That is the intimate connection between two human beings who have a sexual
contact. It's worth saying that there are other forms of love. We can love our children, we can
love animals, we can love ideas, we can love tables, chairs, clouds, all sorts of things
We are capable of many forms of love, but I'd say that when people sing about love and when they cry
about love, it tends to be the love of one very special person we tend to call our soulmate
our partner. It used to be the case that when people found partners, they would do so according
to fairly pragmatic considerations. In most nations, in most parts of the world
for most of history, couples were formed not by the individuals themselves
but by the wider society, families, the village, the court. There were, if you like, dynastic marriages
You would get together with somebody because they had a plough and you had an ox
and it seemed like a good match. Or you were the Duke of Brabant and they were the Princess of Naples
and that was seen as a wonderful union. So you got together for reasons
that were nothing to do with emotional compatibility. There were a lot of tears, there was sadness
there was loneliness, but it didn't seem to matter because relationships were seen to be about something else
There was then a momentous change that occurs towards the end of the 18th century
starting in Britain, France, Germany, parts of Italy, a revolution in feeling that we now know as romanticism. And one of the central tenets of
romanticism is that each individual should be left to decide on their partner by their own
the movements of their own heart. They should be left to decide for themselves. It's a beautiful
idea. It's a very liberating idea. It should make a lot of sense. And we have been in the romantic
age now for, you know, 200 years, perhaps shorter, perhaps a little longer, that kind of time period
And let's put it plainly, it's been a disaster. We are not any appreciably happier now in a romantic
culture than we were in a dynastic culture, where marriages were made for dynastic reasons. Why
Because we have failed collectively to focus with enough intent on the difficulties that couples
will have when they choose each other according to the movements of their own heart. Look, I think
a really key prejudice of the romantic worldview is that if love is working well, it should be
following instinct. There's been an enormous veneration, almost a worship of instinct. Love
is described as a special feeling, not in a set of ideas, not a sense of rationally observable
principles but a feeling. You either have the feeling or you don't. You must be guided by your
feeling. There's even a prejudice against language. You know, true lovers shouldn't talk too much
They should just feel the fluttering of their own hearts. That's why music has a huge prestige
higher than, you know, philosophy. When we're in love, we don't want to read philosophical tracks
we want to hear love songs. That is to do with our sense that emotion should be guiding us
not reason. Reason is the enemy in the romantic worldview of truly happy relationships. If you
follow reason, that's cold. It may be calculating. It's unromantic. And, you know, there are so many
things that are considered unromantic. And I would love to train our audience that every time
something seems unromantic, question it. Is it truly unromantic if we define romanticism as
the pursuit of a workable relationship. On that basis, is it unromantic to talk about money
Is it unromantic to think long and hard about childhood patterns of psychological development
Is it anti-romantic to spend a lot of time thinking about families and friends and compatibility at
that level? All these things, in my view, belong to a truly adequate way of surveying whether a
couple should be together. But I'm also aware that nowadays these things are considered very
unromantic. To live in a romantic culture means to live in a culture that has a set of ideas about
how good couples should form. They should be formed by instinct, that everybody has a soulmate
that you'll recognize your soulmate by a special fluttery feeling, that you shouldn't be asked to
account for that feeling. You should simply go for it and marry in Vegas in two weeks if that's what
seizes you, and that you should be able to communicate deeply with your partner without
using language through that special medium of the heart, through the silence. Also, that you
shouldn't criticize your partner, that true partners should love each other for who they really are
which means no desire to grow or change. You just accept someone. Couples in romantic culture
will sometimes complain, you're trying to change me. And this is seen as really offensive. It's like
what? You know, you complain to your friends. My partner's trying to change me. Oh, what an awful
person. This must be awful. You must get out immediately. If you went to an ancient Greek
if you went to Athens in 400 BC, and you said to an ancient Greek, what is love? And where is the
role of criticism. They would say love is a process of education. It's the education of emotion
And lovers should, of course, be able to pick each other up for things that they don't spot
in one another. And they should be trying to develop into the best version of themselves
rather than simply staying stuck in an admiration for who they are today. The whole process should
be dynamic, become who you could be, not worship who you happen to be right now
All of this sounds very strange in romantic culture, which is why relationships are so
difficult in our time. Let remember that a person life satisfaction is determined by up to around 70 by the quality of their personal relationships A Martian hearing that statistic visiting planet Earth would think well clearly Earthlings given the enormous role of love
will be spending 70% of their money and 70% of their educational time
working out how on Earth this business of love works. Is that true? No
We spend hardly any time rationally thinking about it. None of us are made to sit through classes in attachment theory
classes in apology, classes in listening, classes in communication. No, we're, you know, physics is important
Geography is important. Don't get me wrong. But is there no time for this, given its role in our lives
Do we really want to leave this to chance? And the answer is yes. And why
Because we live in a romantic culture that sees something adverse in planning and thinking and reflecting too hard on the business of love
It's very deleterious, and it's been a serious problem for humanity. One of the most powerful disseminators of romantic culture is art
And by art, I mean all the leading artistic media. Film, definitely
You know, if you were learning about love from films, you would be very confused
And that's why many of us are confused. Because films, and I include television shows and other narrative forms
these things are hugely misleading. They simply do not show what a real relationship is like
I mean, probably you can count on one hand that the number of films that have accurately shown love..
I think one of the most accurate representations of love is Richard Linklater's Before Trilogy
which ended up with Before Midnight. It's a wonderful reckoning, really, with the real complexities of love
But, you know, most films are not that. Most films are blithe, are superficial
are not modest enough in showing us what's really going on between couples
It's also intimidated through music. And music constantly gives us little miniature stories about how love works
And the music is terrific, but it's not accurate to what's going on
And it presses the wrong buttons. Poetry, no one really reads poetry nowadays
If they did, the problem exists in poetry too. So we have so much media around, and yet we're still so much strangers to ourselves
I would say that the single greatest, most misleading disseminator of ideas on love is culture and art
The problem is very heavily located there. Chapter 2. Lessons on love from psychotherapy
I think we need to split history into phases. The phase of the dynastic relationship
where people would get together for dynastic and financial and family reasons
That ended. That's behind us. Then we moved into the Romantic Age
and that caused a lot of problems and it lasted 250 years or so. We need to draw a line under that
We need to move towards something that I call the Therapeutic Age
The age of the Therapeutic Relationship. What on earth is a Therapeutic Relationship
Let me try and explain. A therapeutic relationship begins with the insights of psychotherapy
Psychotherapy has been with us for 120 years or so. It is the most sophisticated understanding of how human beings function emotionally
It's based on the insights of Sigmund Freud and all those who come after him
It is not going away. Some people say, oh, that's isn't that old hat
Wasn't Freud proved wrong? Sorry. No, he wasn't. I mean, of course, many, many areas of Freudian thought are wrong
but the fundamental insight that we have an unconscious, that how we love as adults was shaped by our childhoods
that there are defences that we put in place to protect ourselves as children
that cause difficulties for us as adults, this is indisputably true. And that's not going anywhere
All of us are the result of a very slow and long process of emotional education
that took place between the ages of zero and ten. This is extremely hard to perceive. Most of us are like, I never went to an emotional education
school. I just grew up. You know, my parents lived in Idaho or Milton Keynes or Frankfurt or
Yokohama. There's no sense that we've learned anything in particular. But my goodness, we have
All of us reach adulthood having learned very complicated languages of love and relationships
languages that tell us whether a human being can be trusted, whether we are worth something
whether communication is good, what happens when somebody is angry, what happens when we are shy
what happens when we sulk, how do we tell someone something important? All of these things will have
been imbibed in us. Let me give you a metaphor. Very few of us, I'd say none of us, remember what
it was like to learn language, to learn to speak. And yet, most of us know how to speak. But it went
in invisibly. While we were in the kitchen drawing buttercups, or in the garden doing handstands
all of us will have learned incredibly complex patterns of language, of grammar
We'll have learned about the pluperfect, we'll have learned about the subjunctive without even knowing that such things exist
We'll have learned tens of thousands of words and all sorts of ways of expressing ourselves without knowing a thing
I want to say that a similar process goes on at the level of emotional language
In the same way as we learn a grammatical language, we learn an emotional language
As I say, a language about trust, about kindness, about communication, about self-worth, about dialogue, etc. All these things that we take
with us into adulthood, we learned. And we learned from one place in particular
our families of origin, our mother and our father, or whoever our caregivers happen to be. These
people are immensely, immensely important in shaping our emotional grammar in the same way
as they shaped our linguistic grammar. I mean, anyone who's had a parent
with a regional accent of one kind or another will know that that sticks
You will pick up that regional accent from your parents and you will, it might stick with you all of your life
Same thing goes on with, as it were, the regional accents of emotional intelligence
You may speak a regional accent where every man is extremely frightening
or every woman has a tendency towards alcoholism or everyone who is kind is also slightly sadistic
or everyone who you depend on is also depressed. And these are all very, very difficult languages
to have been exposed to and to pick up on. Many of us, sadly, have come through childhood
with suboptimal language acquisition, emotional acquisition, if you like. And we take that into adulthood unconsciously
We have no clue where we've come from. And because we don't know where we've come from
we don't know how to plot a sensible course. And I'm going to mention something very important
which is attachment theory. One of the most useful tools for working out why relationships
work and why they don't was formulated by two researchers of near genus, John Bowlby and Mary
Ainsworth, two researchers working in the United Kingdom in the 1950s. They'd been very marked by
a phenomenon that took place in the 40s during the Second World War. In the Second World War
huge numbers of children were separated from their parents at a young age and were sent to
families outside London to escape the German bombing of British cities What researchers soon realised was that this was a catastrophe for the children The children began to exhibit extremely distressed behavior They would wet the bed they would get
very angry, they would not be able to eat, they would be in states of almost cataclysmic meltdown
Why was this? Materially they were well looked after. Psychologically, emotionally, they were
bereft. And researchers, this is one of the most moving stories in the history of the Second World
War, researchers realized that if this carried on, this would do more damage for the next generation
than any number of war dead. That the risks of German bombs were actually smaller than the risks
of ruptured emotional attachment. And on that basis, these psychological researchers wrote to
Ministry of Defense and the Home Office and got the children transferred back into their homes
in the cities of the United Kingdom. And thereby a great tragedy was averted. So that after the
height of the crisis, children were returned to their birth families and looked after again
by their closest figures of attachment. Why are we talking about this? Because this was the birth
of attachment theory. From watching how children were around their close caregivers in childhood
it was discovered that all of us are, in a sense, tethered to a story that we first have in childhood
around our caregivers. And the researchers in attachment theory began to divide human beings
into categories, highlighting their characteristic ways of behaving around relationships. To give you
a few of the categories, they identified something that we now know as avoidant attachment
Avoidant attachment is a way of relating to a troublesome and troubling caregiver
who in some ways lets you down. And by the way, caregivers, it's estimated let down around 50% of children
So around half of the population of any nation you care to mention
has got children wandering around with attachment wounds. It's an important statistic to bear in mind when you go on a date
you know 50% chance you've got somebody with an attachment wound that's not the end of the story
we can work with attachment wounds but we need to know that those attachment wounds are there
that's how we're going to try and solve the problem by knowing that the problem is there
an avoidantly attached person is somebody who responds to the insecurities in their relationship
with their caregiver by essentially moving away by pushing away intimacy the classic sentence that
an avoidantly attached person will say to their partner after a few beautiful weeks, a few mini
breaks, a few lovely times, they'll go, this is feeling a bit too intense, and then they will
withdraw in some way. They'll start causing a problem. They'll say, oh, I need to spend the
weekend with my friends or my mother really wants to see me. They'll pull away from a relationship
because it's getting too intense. And really what they mean is, I'm so afraid of love
and the way that I deal with my fear of love is to pull away
So that is avoidant attachment. And we see it all over the place
Some of your viewers will be avoidantly attached. Some of your viewers will have recognized this
with a partner that they had. It's not that the avoidantly attached person
doesn't want love. They want love. They're just terrified of it. Why are they terrified of it
Because it didn't go well for them in childhood. And this is something that we need to really keep in mind
We've got a culture that thinks that everybody's looking for love. They're not
They're ostensibly looking for love, but they're just as busy pushing love away when it comes
running away from it and making sure it doesn't succeed. Why? Because love is a threat
If you've grown up in an environment where love was not possible
where relationships between caregivers and children were not safe, you will have defended yourself against the risks of disappointment
You will have insulated yourself. And then when love comes your way in adulthood
what you will do against your knowledge, against your conscious knowledge, is make sure that love does not succeed
You will sabotage your own chances of a successful relationship. Let me give you a metaphor
Imagine that you've grown up in a prison camp. You were never fed or the diet was very meager
You didn't have much food. And then suddenly one day the prison gates are opened and you get to go to a banquet and you get to eat anything you like
And what might be the response? Panic. You might make yourself sick. You might try and eat the food
It might even kill you or threaten to kill you. Because why? You cannot metabolize the goodness on offer
Because you have learned to function with an emotionally restricted diet. an emotionally restricted diet where you've made do with very little. And so when there's a lot
suddenly on offer, you panic and you think this is too intense. In the same way that somebody who
has been going with almost no food will think it's far too intense to eat a rich chocolate cake
And sometimes healthy love is like a rich chocolate cake which we cannot bear
and some of your viewers will know the phenomenon whereby you offer somebody love
You love them, you feel that you want to give them a good life, you want to be a good partner to them
and they sort of accept it and then suddenly they run away. They put dynamite under it
This is a very common occurrence. What's going on? It's not that it's too bad, it's too good
And for some of us who had to get used to very poor relationships
the greatest threat is not a bad relationship, that's fine, It's a good relationship
And you get patterns, horrific patterns, where people have had an unstable and violent father, let's say
an uncaring and absent mother. And you think that these people are going to, you know, get to adulthood
and they're really going to make it up for themselves. They're going to find the love they yearn for and they're going to make it work
And what happens to them? Maybe a nice lover comes along. Someone kind offers them, you know, a home, as it were
you know, an emotional home. And maybe at the beginning they can bear it. It's easier at the
beginning. You can bear it at the beginning. But then the problem starts setting in when it really
becomes clear that love may work. That's when the traumatized attachment lover gets their sticks of
dynamite out and starts to blow the foundations of the house up so that they can return to the
suffering that feels more familiar. What you need to understand is that in love, we don't look for
for what will make us happy. Absolutely not. We look for what feels familiar
For some people, happiness and familiarity are one, but for many of us, they are not
For many of us, what is most familiar is a sense of not being loved properly
a sense of not being sure where we stand, a sense that someone may threaten us
a sense that someone may abandon us. That is our true home
And if that's our true home, we will be guided with a kind of honing instinct
to re that which is why you find again and again that the children of alcoholics do not head for sober partners They head for people who are struggling with alcohol Why the offspring of violent parents do not head for calm and kind partners
They head for people who are struggling with their temper. Now, what do we do about this
One optimistic story is to be found in the work of Sigmund Freud
who in many ways everything returns to him. He observed something which he called the repetition compulsion
He observed that human beings are not guided by a search for pleasure. They are guided by a search to repeat patterns, a repetition compulsion, often of pain
And he proposed an ingenious and, I think, optimistic answer to this
He argued that what many of us are doing when we repeat traumatic experiences
for example, getting back together with a violent partner or an alcoholic partner
What we're really doing there is not simply suffering ad infinitum for no reason
What we're trying to do is to master a challenge that we couldn't master in childhood
and we're trying to master it with the resources of adulthood. In other words, we're trying to get the alcoholic partner to stop drinking
in a way that we couldn't when we were children. We're trying to get the distance, emotionally uncommunicative partner
to start to talk in the way that our mother or father didn't. We're trying to make it up in the present
And Freud realized that for many of us, we wouldn't find the kind of excitement that we need
until we locate a partner who does suggest that they suffer from the very problem
that our crucial caregivers suffered from, until we find a little bit of an echo
of the original suffering. But the optimistic story is perhaps we can work with them
in the relationship to heal the pain. It's a very optimistic story
It works sometimes, and sometimes we may need to cut our losses
You know, love is not always about keeping going. Love is also sometimes about knowing that you are in a pattern
and that pattern is driving you to destruction. And when that happens, it's also important to know how to save yourself from sure destruction
Chapter 3. The Playbook for a Successful Relationship First of all, the idea of a playbook sounds strange
The idea of a playbook that you need to create to get in a relationship sounds really odd
You think, I don't need a playbook. I just need to head on in there, get a dating app, and off I go, and a nice new pair of clothes
But isn't it interesting, and wouldn't it be lovely to have a playbook that would be
trying to guide you to acquire the knowledge that you need for love
So the idea that love is a skill rather than an emotion is a strange one, but I think an
absolutely essential one in the worldview that I'm positing. You know, if somebody said, I'm going
to climb Mount Everest or K2, you would say, okay, how have you prepared for this? And you'd be
expecting them to show up with ropes, with training programs, with oxygen, with specially prepared
packs of food. You can get the metaphor. We walk into the mountain of love without sufficient
preparation and equipment. And then we're surprised that we routinely tumble off the mountain and we
blame the other person. We say we didn't match the right person. We haven't found our person
We go back on the dating app and we go ever further to try and find the right person
Don't get me wrong. Dating apps have their role. Sometimes we need to scan and see who's out there
and find a person who halfway meets us where we want to be. But once you've found a more or less
suitable person, that's when the work begins. And the work is to turn a stranger into somebody
that you can understand and who can understand you without bottling it, without panicking
without throwing them in the bin, without saying, we can't work this out if after five weeks and a pleasant mini break in Copenhagen
we suddenly have a conflict. No, the point is you need to stay where you are
and try and figure it out. But most people give up too soon
They say, we can't possibly do this. And they run for the hills, go back on the dating app
and find the next person with whom they will then try out an equally unfulfilling attempt to match their heart with a stranger's. What we need to do is
to start to create right people rather than search for them. And what does that mean to create a right
person? It means to work on yourself psychologically and therapeutically so that you understand your
script from childhood and do not simply play it out onto innocent person after innocent person
that you take responsibility for the problems that you are bringing into a relationship
At the School of Life, which I founded, an institution that is dedicated to emotional
growth and development, we tell our people that when they're on a date with somebody
among the first questions is to ask people playfully, how are you crazy? What does that
mean, how are you crazy? Why is everybody crazy? They're not necessarily crazy. Well, all of us have stuff that we need to be on top of. And if your person at dinner says to you
Yeah, I get the question. Yeah, I've got my crazy and my crazy is this, my crazy is that, my father, my mother
This is turning out to be a safe person. If the person goes, how do you mean? I can't possibly answer that question. That's rude
You think I'm not right or imperfect. Run for the hills. Drop it right there and then. I'm exaggerating, but this is probably not a person you should be hanging out with
because none of us need or can have perfect partners. But what we can have and must search for and must try to become is people who know enough about their patterns to be able to warn their prospective partners of what's going on and take averting action
The beginning of therapeutic relationships is to know that two people, when entering a couple, are not entering without a lot of history
It is essential that couples learn as much as possible about that history so that they are ready for the challenges and perplexities of love
A therapeutic relationship requires that each partner get on top of their dynamics that date back to childhood and are able to discuss them with relative grace, patience and insight with their partner so that when problems arise, and they will, they can adopt a therapeutic language
It is therapeutic to say, for example, when there is a conflict, I hear your point of view. It may not be mine, but I hear that it's yours
It is not therapeutic to say, you're wrong, you're an idiot, and you're just like your mother
or indeed like your father. This is not therapeutic. I'm kidding, but I'm making a very
serious point. Indeed, we do not tend to talk to each other in therapeutically informed language
We shout, we scream, we blame, we shapeshift, we don't take responsibility. We do all sorts of
things that doom us in relationships. Then we stand back and we say we're surprised. We are a
society that is obsessed with finding the right person without pausing to think, how do I become
the right person? How do I work on myself? Understanding that cannot be done simply
and this is paradoxical, by being on your own. This is another unbelievable mystery. You can't
understand yourself just by being with yourself. You need other people. Why is that? It's like
Why do you need a mirror to see the back of your head? Because we don't have eyes there
We need someone to help us to see the things that are
really hard for us to see. And psychotherapy gives us a forum in which we can come, tell the therapist
about what's going on in our lives, explain what happened last Monday, explain, you know, what
happened when we took that trip to New York or Buffalo, wherever it is, what happened. And then
slowly pattern recognition sets in. The therapist is able to go, it's funny, in that last relationship
you did this, this new relationship you're doing that, and you mentioned that your parent did
something that sounds kind of similar. So I wonder what's going on. And then slowly insight comes
We start to put the pieces together. We think I'm up to something. I'm doing something. And that way
is liberation. We can start to break the unconscious stories that we're living. Psychotherapy works
with this concept known as defences or defense mechanisms. In other words, these are tools that
our minds adopt to try and shield themselves from accurate knowledge of their own workings
This could sound really odd. Like, why don't we just embrace self-knowledge with open arms? Why do
we need to run away from it? The answer is that knowledge of ourselves is frightening. It's really
awful to have to learn certain things. It may make us very anxious. It may make us so sorrowful
It may panic us. And so we push away unwelcome information. I think that we still perhaps can't
quite bear how complicated we are. You know, we're very squeamish creatures. We don't like to sit
with ourselves. We don't like to sit with our emotions. Self-knowledge remains an enormously
elusive goal. You know, I think it is the most important goal of life. To understand oneself is
literally the meaning of life. The ancient Greeks knew this, you know, know thyself was the most
important command in ancient Greek culture and philosophy. Know thyself, most important thing
you could do. If you said nowadays, you know, in a conversation with friends or colleagues
what's your goal? Where are you trying to get to next year? What are you trying to do? Say, know thyself. People would go, that's a strange person there. We don't know about this
person, right? It's not an acceptable goal. We know that it's good to make money. We know that
it's good to travel to foreign countries, to learn how to fry garlic and to learn salsa. It's not
particularly esteemed to know yourself. And that's why we wander around strangers to ourselves and
therefore enormously confusing. And let's put it frankly, dangerous to other people. Because a
person who doesn't understand themselves, you know, if confronted with their behavior will go
it wasn't me, I didn't do it, or I can't think, or, you know, ask me tomorrow. They can't account
for themselves. They don't know why they do the stuff they do. They will simply, in a relationship
for example, bail out of a relationship going, you know, it's getting too intense. And why
They don't know. They don't understand what they themselves are doing. Even though, you know
they may have spent five years learning, you know, Spanish. They may have taken an advanced
degree in Japanese. They may be, you know, very active in all sorts of ways. They may have learned
pottery, they may be holding down a great job in marketing, something. But the point is
they will not have learned the really true constituents of emotional functioning
because they've been able to get away with it. And part of the playbook of becoming a better lover
is to dial down your defence mechanisms, to observe them. Typical defence mechanism is to push
responsibility onto other people, to say it's your fault. For example, someone tries to tell you
something about yourself. Someone says, I think that you, you know, you're a little bit this when
that happens, you know, and rather than going, thank you, let me think about that. You go
why are you being rude? Or this is not a good time for me, or I can't absorb this now. In other words
you push away information that might have helped you, not because it's false, but because it's
difficult to absorb. And that's often what happens to us. All of us, all of us are involved in
defense mechanisms. All of us can't quite bear the full truth about ourselves. It helps us to go to
psychotherapy. I know that, you know, AI is, you know, delivers some aspects of therapy. It can be
good at points. The good thing about a real human being is that they are not guided just by you
They've got their own independent judgment. And also you're in a relationship with them. And that
relationship is part of what heals you. Because the relationship with the therapist is a harbinger
of the relationship that you can then take out into the world, a relationship of trust and mutual
understanding. This is something that AI is not going to be able to replace anytime soon
So we need to understand ourselves. We need to understand the past. And then we need a certain
spirit. One of the things that we need in that playbook of love is a good sense of humor. That
could sound superfluous, like what on earth, you know, why do we need a sense of humor? Well, a sense
of humor is a modesty about our capacity to understand anything. And if we can signal to
our partners that, you know, we're a little stupid. We don't get it. We don't have all the
answers. That is a wonderful emollient. It's a wonderful lubricant to love because it just dials
down the temperature. If your partner is able to say, ah, I may not have understood this. I may not
be getting it. That's brilliant. And if they can make a little joke too, that's great. You know
if two people can learn to see each other as idiots, but lovable idiots, that's a beautiful
moment in love. It could sound negative. It's not. It's not. It's the most generous thing you can do
We are two blind people helping each other to find a way forward. If that's the spirit in which we
can enter love, that is a spirit of generosity, a spirit of mutual forgiveness. Too often we get on
our high horses. This is the way it is. I know the answer. This is what I think. That is not a friend
of love. So we need, if you like, a modesty, a humorous modesty. Let me give you another idea
Another thing that we need in order to make love work is a certain degree of pessimism
You know, optimism is the enemy of love. If we think that we will have a perfect love story
a love story with no ruffles in it, with no kinks in it, no, it's not going to happen
We need to accept that even a really good relationship has constant moments of crisis
And that's okay. The problem is not crisis. The problem is how do we repair crises
Can we repair them with forgiveness, with understanding, and most of all, with curiosity
Can we get curious about why we had a bus stop? Can we be searching for why our attachment patterns are not compatible
Can we get interested in why we're difficult to love? and that way will become easier to love
So pessimism is not an enemy of love. Knowing that there is no such thing as the right person
actually helps you to find a good enough person. You know a few years ago I wrote an essay that went viral I read it for the New York Times It was called Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person Why did that essay go viral I think it went viral because people all feel
sorry, let me correct that. Not all people, but many, many people feel
that they have married the wrong person. And they panic about this and they feel so ashamed
So here's an essay in the New York Times that says, yeah, we're all gonna marry the wrong person
And you know what? It's okay. You don't need to marry the right person
You need to marry a good enough person. You know, compatibility is not a precondition of love
Compatibility is the fruit of love. If we get together with someone and we find that there are differences, right
They have one kind of attachment style. We have another. They like golf
We like tennis. They like the curtains to be green. We like the curtains to be yellow, whatever it is
Too often in modern romantic dating culture, the answer is get out
Just get out, find someone else, find someone better. And that's why all the technological tools
are all about putting new people in front of you. Of course, sometimes you need to find new people
but as much as finding new people, what you need to do is to learn to live
with the people who are in front of you, with the people that you found. Many of us have already found a good enough partner
and yet we throw them in the bin because we are taught by romantic culture
that we can always find a perfect person with whom it will click immediately
And this is such a destructive idea. If you think, you know what, the work starts here
The work starts when you have a problem. Then you roll up your sleeves and you think
okay, well, I know that I, you know, broadly think this person's a nice person
Now we're gonna work at making sure that it can work. And so we're gonna talk
and we're gonna take this problem apart. We're gonna become like engineers
who've got a malfunctioning machine. We're gonna sort it out. This sounds unromantic, doesn't it
Imagine saying, in order to make my relationship work, every evening I've talked for an hour
in really patient ways. You think, oh my God, go to Vegas, find someone easier
Well, good luck to you. Maybe you'll find that person. But for some of us, especially some of us who've come through difficult relationships
in our past, we may need to go and do that kind of excavation
Maybe that's fine. I think that a good enough person is someone who will engage with the business of working towards compatibility
That they won't assume that you are wrong just because there are problems
They will know how to repair crises. They will know how to be curious. They will know how to listen
They will know how to be patient. That is compatible with all sorts of problems. Sexual problems, relational problems, administrative problems
Doesn't matter. You can work through them. So the wrong person is someone who stonewalls, who always blames you, who blanks out, who says, it's not my responsibility, or, you know, it was easier with my ex, and, you know, why are you so difficult, etc
These people are trouble because they are refusing the work of love. So it doesn't matter if you have many, many difficulties
That's okay. The problem is your attitude to the difficulties. and the solution is an attitude of indulgence
of curiosity and of calm consideration of the flaws that unite us all
We are all mad monkeys and so long as we've been kind towards the mad monkey in all of us, we'll be okay
One of the real problems, and you know, there's simply no solution
but we need to accept that there's a real problem, is how long it takes to work out who we are as lovers
as people interested in relationships, who we are. It takes so long and it takes especially long
to try and change our patterns. You know, if we are somebody who sabotages relationships
every time that love comes along, how long is that gonna take to unwind this
Well, it takes insight, but then it takes, as it were, work, true work
And sometimes people go to therapy for six sessions or 12 sessions and they go
I haven't changed, therapy doesn't work. And let's come back to my earlier example
about language. Imagine that you decided middle age as an English speaker to pick up Korean or
Finnish. And you went to six lessons and you tried to learn Finnish and Korean. And by the end of six
lessons, you could barely ask for, you know, barely say your own name or say hello. And then you blamed
it on the whole process. And you said, I'm not learning this language. It's rubbish. People would
say you're being too impatient. And I think that some of the same holds true for rewiring our
emotional language. We can't pick this up in six sessions of 50 minutes. It takes a long time
A pattern that was laid down over decades is going to take many, many years to figure it out. It's
I mean, believe me, it's bad news. I wish it weren't so. Can we do anything in the meantime
Yes, of course we can. We can, you know, we can be learning and walking. We don't have to pause
and just sit by the roadside. We can be starting on the path of relationships. We can be starting
from a relatively young age. But we need to be doing the work alongside
and we need to be able to at least do the first thing
which is to say, I'm learning, I'm a learner. There's a real difference between someone who goes
I know it all, and someone who knows that they are still learning. When Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher
was asked why he was the wisest person in antiquity, he said, because I know what I don't know
In other words, that the birth of true wisdom is associated with a knowledge of your ignorance
I think that's the best way we can proceed also in relation to our love lives
There are lots of questions that we could learn to ask ourselves and our partners in order to try and find a better relationship
One of them is this. When I get close to you, how does that feel, right
To open up a window onto some of the complexities that occur when somebody gets close
if I love you, what part of you might worry, right? That's a good question. Does any part of
you worry? Another really useful question is how do I respond when someone is trying to communicate
something to me? Do I stonewall or do I accept? Am I able to pause and think the issue might be
with me? Or do I always have to go, I can't answer that. It's the other person. You're being unfair
You're putting me under pressure. What is your level of emotional dexterity? So that's a good
question to be asking yourself as well. Also, one of the really good questions in any relationship
is to say, how have I annoyed you? How have I frustrated you? You know, a lot of what happens
between couples is there are things that are bubbling away beneath the surface that people
can't find the courage to say. And because they can't say them, the problem doesn't improve
The problem gets worse. People can't have sex anymore. A lot of the reason why people can't
have sex, it's got nothing to do with sex, it's to do with the fact they feel disconnected and
angry and misunderstood You can have sex with someone who you feel misunderstood by or you feel furious with What helps desire is trust And the way to build up trust is to communicate
and particularly communicate ruptures of trust. So if you want to have good sex, don't get a candle
don't go to a hotel. Start to ask each other, have I annoyed you? Is there something I've done
that you'd like to tell me? And you say this patiently, not in the middle of the night when
you're stressed or maybe you've drunk too much, but when you're calm, when there's a sense of
you know, lightness and forgiveness, use the right moment to ask the right question
We're living in a world where therapeutic language and insights have spread for the first time far
outside the consulting room. There is mass adoption at a superficial level of therapeutic
language. And the area where we find this most obviously is social media and in particular
Instagram, which is enormous. It's an enormous force in the world. And it has brought up a
generation, I'd say, to speak in pseudo or vaguely therapeutic terms. I don't mean that as an insult
Some of these insights have been fantastic. People are now able to talk about, let's say
attachment theory, that, you know, the mention of an avoidant attachment theory or an anxious
attachment theory in many circles now doesn't create the puzzlement that it was generating 15
years ago. 15 years ago, this was not common knowledge. That was still in the university
in textbooks, and in the consulting room. Now it's out in the world. And the medium that has
changed this, as I say, is social media. What's the problem? I'll tell you one of the problems
One of the problems is whose fault it is. The tone of a lot of social media posting
blames the problem for the struggles in relationships fairly and squarely on the partner
not on yourself. There is an obsession with finding borderline people, narcissistic people
avoidance, anxious people out in the world. And of course they exist, but the tone is the problem
The tone says, get out. These are red flags and everybody that you're meeting, the reason why you
haven't made a relationship work is because these people are unbalanced psychologically
My answer is this. If you are looking to find a person with no problems at all
with no psychological disturbances, good luck to you. If you're looking to find somebody with no red flags, good luck to you
Everybody has red flags. That's part of what it means to be human
That's the story of Genesis. The story of Genesis is Adam and Eve had some red flags
That's what it is to be human being, is somebody with a red flag
So the problem is not the red flag, it's how you deal with it. And this is what I worry that therapeutic culture on social media doesn't train us to do
It doesn't train us for patience. It doesn't train us to think we might be the problem
It doesn't ask us to think what we've brought to the situation. It doesn't create an atmosphere of forgiveness
The reason is very simple. Outrage sells. It's more fun. It feels more spirited
It's punchier to say, that ex of yours, they're the avoidant. They're crazy
They're narcissistic. it sounds better and it leaves everybody happier. But long term, it's not the solution
Chapter four, overcoming status anxiety and loneliness. You know, we mustn't forget that one of the sources of love that is most important to us
is not just interpersonal romantic love, but the love that you get from other people
strangers dependent on your standing in the community your status you know status is a really
interesting feature of everybody's ambitions you know why do we work so hard we work so hard not
just for material rewards we work hard in order to gain the esteem the respect the regard of people
whose good affections we rely on to feel good about ourselves if you said to somebody you've
got a choice. Either we'll give you $10 million a year, but every time anyone sees your face
they'll go, oh my God, I hate that person. They're awful. I despise that person. You could have that
option. Or we'll give you a minimum wage, absolute minimum, bare minimum to survive
But every time anyone sees you, they'll go, oh my God, that person is amazing. It's just great
et cetera. We know which one we'd pick. We know that we would pick the love and affection of the
stranger and the respect and esteem of our community way over simple material rewards. Now
in our culture, the reason why most of us work so hard and the reason why most of us are so
interested in money has nothing to do with the money. It's just that money is the chief conduit
towards the love and respect that we stand to gain from our communities. If you change the status
system and what it's earned, you know, what you get status for, you will change the incentive
structure. There have been periods in history where the number one thing you needed to do in
order to have a high status was to worship God really intently. And then if you're good at
worshiping God, you'd be considered amazing. And then people did that in droves, and that was
considered very, very serious. In other cultures, it was considered very serious to be a good hunter
So people became more and more good at hunting. And that was what you did. And that was the route
to getting status. Nowadays, how do we know what the status system is based on? We know it because
of a very simple question that any stranger will ask us within normally 30 seconds of meeting us
What do you do? And according to how you answer that question, people are either going to be
really pleased to see you. Oh, great. We must hang out. Or they'll leave you alone by the peanuts
and they don't want to know you. We're living in a world of snobs. A snob is really anyone who takes
a small part of you and comes to a global decision of what you're worth and how much love you're
worth. And that is the reality, the brute reality of the way in which we live in society. We will be
judged ruthlessly by our careers, by what is on our business card. And we will be given love
status love, not romantic love, but status love. Maybe romantic love too, that's another
consideration, but generally status love according to how impressive we are in the field of careers
It's why we work so hard, it's why we're so panicked about careers, and it's why there's
to spare when careers don't work out. We're losing not just materially, we're losing our sense of our
good name in the eyes of society. It's very brutal. I think older societies, pre-modern societies
had some built-in safety valves to try and protect people from that unitary sense that what you are
worth is what you do, that you are what you do. It's always been somewhere there in the system
because we are material creatures. We do depend on material goods. So it's always been that as part
of the mix. But other cultures have softened this in a way that ours no longer does. They've softened
it in a number of ways. Firstly, through religion, through the mass adoption of religion. And the
interesting thing about religion is generally the gods that people have worshipped love people not for what they do but for who they are They look inside your soul And that a vital defense mechanism You giving unto Caesar what Caesar wants and the rest is up to God
And that gives you a sense of freedom. It's like, well, I may not be performing so well in my career, but I've got an alternative
route to love and affection. That's a huge defense. The other thing that really protected people was isolation
You know, we are one of the first societies to be constantly surrounded 24-7 by other people
We live in vast cities. Most of the world's population now lives in a city
That wasn't the case until, you know, a minute ago. This is very new
When you don't live in a city, what do you live surrounded by? A very important psychological tool called nature
Trees, rivers, forests, grasses, insects, animals. What on earth has these things got to do with love
Well, what they do is they break that unitary system where you are worth what another human being defines you as being worth
When you're surrounded by nature, you're no longer just defined by other humans
You get to live in a more expansive, a more liberated world where your value is up to wider forces
And that lends a lot of oxygen and a lot of freedom that we've lost as we've moved towards urban societies
And of course, as we've gone online. Okay, here's another pet idea of mine
You know, religion disappeared as the guiding force in people's lives around 100 years ago
when Nietzsche famously said, God is dead. He announced the death of God
Now, you might say, hang on a minute, there are lots and lots of believers. There are. Of course there are
Many societies are still defined by religion. However, one can propose that in key ways we are no longer living in religious societies
We are living in modern, secular societies that are based around romantic love, status performance, material goods, a denial of nature, a cutting off from the natural world, and a cutting off from any sense of human agency being limited
We believe in human agency being able to determine everything. Along with that comes a denial, of course, of our own mortality
How would we start to do something about that? Well, I think we need to look to religions for answers
Religions have worked it out. I think that we need to steal from religions and to institute in
secular culture many of the manoeuvres and safety valves and genuine insights that religions were
brilliant at delivering. For example, we need to break bread together. All religions bring people
strangers together to break bread from different communities in order to lessen suspicion. We need
to get back to a tradition of communal dining and of breaking the barriers that separates
strangers from one another. We need also to talk with intelligence and intent about love
and about our capacity and possibility of loving better than we do, of reminding ourselves that we
need to make an effort around love. Buddhism does this, Christianity does this, all the main religions
emphasize not just that love is important, but that love is hard. And we need a little bit of
that. Religions also, almost all of them have created spaces that are separate from the spaces
of commerce. Spaces that are beautiful, spaces that are peaceful, spaces that bring people together
to create a different kind of fellowship. One more guided by a spirit of friendship and kindness
and vulnerability. We need to replace our temples and churches with secular buildings that aren't
just going to be shopping malls and that aren't just going to be car showrooms, but that places
that will bring people together, the most beautiful community centres imaginable, still need to be
built. And I'd love to see them built. We think we're alone in being alone. And we think there
is shame that attends to admitting how alone we are. The route out of loneliness is to share
your loneliness, is to dare to believe that the things you are most ashamed of cannot be
structurally, they cannot be things that exist in your heart alone. That they have to be things
that despite the evidence, the surface evidence of other people's cheerfulness, probably exists in
other people. Other people are also lonely, are also sad, also feel lost, also feel that they've
messed up, also have a hard time in their relationships. The beginning of friendship
begins with the capacity to be vulnerable and to admit to loss and sadness. We think that friendship
is a mutual club for cheerfulness. It's not. True friendship begins with tears, with the ability to
admit to sadness. This is why men in many ways have a harder time than women forming deep friendships
because men, there's still in many societies a real taboo around male tears. Men cannot admit
to being sad and weak without feeling that they have lost their masculinity
extremely unfortunate as a route to friendship, because it means that your friendship will need
to be based on posturing and on the recounting of triumph and success. Whereas in fact, of course
true friendship begins with the revelation of vulnerability and fragility. As ever with a
problem, self-awareness and mutual awareness is the way through. Once we can see the pattern
we can break the pattern. Once we can see that we're living in a prison defined by material
a material status system that many of us don't value, that we are doing this not because we want to
but because it exists, we can start to find alternatives. I'm not talking about throwing in your job
I'm talking about evaluating yourself and other people beyond your job. I'm talking about getting back in touch with nature
I'm talking about getting in touch with vulnerability and sharing that vulnerability. These are all tools and mechanisms
that we can put in motion to escape an otherwise really oppressive and genuinely loveless
environment in which we're forced to live and can't breathe very easily in. You could define love
as the quest to overcome isolation and understand someone else and find understanding by someone
else. It is the most noble and the most complicated of goals. If anyone can reach the end of their
life and say, I have loved, I've loved properly, I've understood and been understood, I've helped
and been helped. This is a life well lived. We don't need to achieve that much that is splendid
in the material world or in the world of insight in the humanities, insight in the sciences. What
we really ultimately need to do to make our time worthwhile is to have built a bridge to another
human and to have opened our heart and have seen theirs with respect and humility and generosity
That truly ultimately is the definition of a good life. want to support the channel join the big think members community where you get access to videos
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