Long review.
I am not even remotely interested in what philosophers write and narrate because deep down I am well aware of plain truth that no matter how calm, composed and reasonable the writer asks you to be, it is physically impossible for us to maintain that sense of rationality when one is in the middle 0f a heated argument. One tend to say hurtful things. Period.
It can be deeply condescending thing to mention but having lived 22 years in here, and being an observant in almost half of those, I am familiar with whatever content this book had. My opinion on love and being engaged or married to someone has always been and will be fixate and that is--
"I am sure, It is not what you see and read, It is not glamour, It is not life changing, It is a change one needs to learn to cope up with, It is transitional, It has scope of improvement at any given point of life and above everything----It has a lot of potential to hurt you in uncountable ways and It is not solution to our problems and happiness".
Coming to the book in hand, I first came across Alain's work in 2017, while having a mid life crisis in my 1st year of engineering, wherein Amazon told me that "Hey, If you like GARY CHAPMAN, might as well try Alain de botton" I said No- Thank you very much. But the primal need and curiosity to know about love once in a while is a trait in-built in me.
This book, talks about every peculiar aspect of relationship leaving nothing to guess. It talks about communication, blame, infidelity, past experiences, crushes, importance of domestic chores in the grand scheme of things like spending life with each other. Past which guides our present relationship because of permanent embedded need to cope with familiar threats. Sexual orientation, extreme sex and lack of thereof, whether sex and love are mutually inclusive, if yes, who decided that, consensual partners or society? Alain covers every ground possible.
Some of the parts I already knew of in my subconscious but loved reading are----
The most comical of all times:
‘I promise to be disappointed by you and you alone. I promise
to make you the sole repository of my regrets, rather than to distribute them
widely through multiple affairs and a life of sexual Don Juanism. I have
surveyed the different options for unhappiness, and it is to you I have
chosen to commit myself.'
'Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or
don’t marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world’s foolishness,
you will regret it; weep over it, you will regret that too … Hang yourself,
you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that too; hang
yourself or don’t hang yourself, you’ll regret it either way; whether you
hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen,
is the essence of all philosophy'
Okay, Here comes the not-so-comical ones.
"Strangely, even when we’ve had pretty disappointing experiences, we don’t
lose faith in our expectations. Hope reliably triumphs over experience"
"A particularly poignant sign of the trouble we
have with talking in relationships is the tendency to sulk. At heart, sulking
combines intense anger with an intense desire not to communicate what one
is angry about: one both desperately wants to be understood and yet is
utterly committed to not explaining oneself plainly. It happens a lot, and it’s
telling us that, far from being easy and natural, good discussion in a
relationship can be very hard to manage."
"Irrational blame is at heart just a symptom of an intensity of investment in
another person. We attack because we have richly entangled our deepest
dreams and anxieties with our lover."
"Disagreement is what happens when love succeeds and you get
to know someone close up across the full range of their life."
"Our adaptations to the troubles of our past
make us all maddening prospects in the present."
All in all, if you have had, many experiences in love or being close to loving someone, what Alain says is already something you know, but it is short, and moreover it is good to read your own thoughts and feeling being articulated in 100 pages with such details.