Or do you find yourself in relationships with partners who do choose you but who you know, heart of hearts, will make you deeply unhappy? Do you find yourself persuaded by intensity (or by flattery, or by genuine if one-sided love), to the point of ignoring your own doubts and ending in uneasy partnership? In all these situations, it may be time to change.
All that said, don’t panic if there’s some imbalance in a relationship, particularly at the start. Every relationship suffers disequilibrium. Even for just a few moments, one person wonders while the other is certain; one person doubts while the other has faith. So long as the dynamic eventually settles into an equal match, that’s fine. More, if what we experience at the start of a promising relationship is a certain deliberation on either side, this may well be good news. The resulting choice, if it comes, is likely to be more considered – and therefore more dependable.
Choosing
The first chapter of this book painted partner choice as a journey – and the promise that description offers is that there is a conclusion to the trip. It’s a promise that will almost certainly come true. We may have encountered detours or cul-de-sacs along the way, but the vast majority of us will reach our destination. We will let go of alternative possibilities and begin to focus more and more surely on one. We will come to a point where we believe that we can love, and that we can be loved in return.
And there we are, decision made. We echo the moving words of poet Edwin Muir: ‘yours, my love, is the right human face’. We know. We have committed. We are set for the happiest of endings.
Except, except . . . of course this isn’t the end. Commitment is only the beginning, the first choice. There will be other decisions to come and it’s wise to remember they are out there waiting for us.
Moving in together. Getting engaged. Marrying. Having children. Raising those children and then staying together to the end of life. The thing about these later transitions is that by the time we make them, we’re in a different place from before. As Somerset Maugham pointed out, we are not the same as we were even a year ago, and ‘nor are those we love’.
Through the course of our relationship, we will likely several times come slap up against what can only be described as the Wall of Life – trials of illness, accident, job change, ageing, bereavement. Through these, and with the passing of time, we will learn more about our partner and they will learn more about us. And this may shift the goalposts. Soberingly, the second half of the Somerset Maugham quotation reminds us that it is only good fortune if ‘we, changing, continue to love a changed person’.
Whether or not we have such good fortune, much of what this book suggests is always relevant. In the context not of a hoped-for or recent connection but an existing and lengthy commitment, it is still useful to specify what we want from our partnership; to reassess the fit with our partner’s values, goals and personality; to face fully whether we can still emotionally respond to each other. And sometimes that raises questions. If our partner promised us a rose garden but over the years has delivered only armfuls of brutally stinging nettles, it’s understandable if we dump the greenery in the waste bin and head for the door.
Nettles aside, the most important factor in making future partnership decisions – just as for the initial choice to partner with that person – is not whether we are currently ecstatic but whether we are currently growing, whether we trust that we will grow in the future, and whether we believe our partner is growing too. If we are in a relationship that pushes us to mature, we may not be 100 per cent joyful, 24/7 – ask any caterpillar in the process of becoming a butterfly. Yet if we are still evolving, that will make it worthwhile to keep loyal.
Let me end with a tribute to continuing loyalty. In his novel Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez describes the experience of the multitude of ordinary couples who stay the course even though it proves hard. He pays tribute to the immense courage and willingness of those who have chosen again, beyond the first romantic decision, who have overcome the challenges of ‘daily incomprehension’, ‘instantaneous hatred’ and ‘reciprocal nastiness’ that characterize most relationships, and he celebrates that it is fully possible to come through and to triumph, to reach the point where partners ‘love each other best’.
That’s the hope. That if both of us keep evolving, keep learning, keep growing, then at some point in the future, we will be able to create a wonderful partnership, to relate to each other as never before, to love each other ‘best’. And then we will know for absolute certain that we have made the right choice.
Bibliography
Books
Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, Vintage Children’s Classics, 2012 edn
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Wordsworth Classics, 1992 edn
——, Sense and Sensibility, Wordsworth Classics, 1992 edn
Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Vintage, 1998
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, Wordsworth Classics, 1992 edn
Brené Brown, Daring Greatly, Avery Publishing Group, 2015
Gary Chapman, The Five Love Languages, Moody Press, 2015
Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage, Penguin USA, 2006
Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Picador, 2001
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Wordsworth Classics, 1992 edn
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, Wordsworth Classics, 1993 edn
Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving, Thorsons, 2010
Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love, Bloomsbury, 2007
Dr Sue Johnson, Hold Me Tight, Piatkus, 2011
——, Love Sense, Little, Brown, 2013
Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow, Penguin, 2012
Claire Langhamer, The English in Love: The Intimate Story of an Emotional Revolution, OUP, 2013
Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera, Vintage, 2007
Simon May, Love: A History, Yale University Press, 2012
Chris McKinlay, Optimal Cupid: Mastering the Hidden Logic of OkCupid, CreateSpace, 2014
Toni Morrison, Beloved, Vintage Classics, 2007 edn
David Schnarch, Passionate Marriage: Keeping Love and Intimacy Alive in Committed Relationships, W. W. Norton, 2009
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Wordsworth Classics, 2000 edn
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, Wordsworth Classics, 1995 edn
Amy Webb, Data, a Love Story, Plume, 2014
David Whyte, The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship, Riverhead Books, 2010
Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body, Vintage, 1993
Websites and other resources
www.notimeforlove.com
Eli J. Finkel et al., ‘Online Dating: A Critical Analysis From the Perspective of Psychological Science’, available at www.psychologicalscience.org
www.quantifiedbreakup.tumblr.com