To love is to have, to desire is to want

I recently listened to a talk by a psychologist on the dynamics of relationships: about why so many of us today are unhappy in love and why the majority of marriages fail. In the past she said, marriage was a social contract entered into to provide financial safety and familial stability and that people did not marry with an expectation of the fulfillment of romantic love. I am not sure this is entirely true but for certain marriage as a stabilizer and as a social pact was by far more important than the ideal of romance when choosing a partner in the past.

Yet today, we want and expect everything, and even diametrically opposed things from a single relationship. We want the safety and stability and certainty that marriage brings combined with the charge, attraction, desire and passion of a love affair. We want our partners to be our best friends and confidants, to share all of life's duties and burdens equally and to accept us with all our flaws and we expect them at the same time to be continually appealing, desirable and 'new' to us. The psychologist said that if love is about security and 'having',  desire is about 'wanting', it is the excitement of  'not having', of discovering, exploring and of the sensation this brings which makes us feel alive. 

It seems the key to longevity then in relationships is to keep some 'distance', not necessarily physical distance (as we are enduring now) but mental separation. To see one's partner not only in relation to oneself but as an individual. In other words to try to see this person so familiar to us with a sense of wonder and curiosity, to admire them for who they are and for their achievements, separate from our own. I had a moment like that last night when you sent me the letter your received from the university in Denmark listing off all of your academic qualifications and all that you have achieved in your career. This came at the perfect time actually, reminding us both of what you have done, after a week of you questioning yourself.

Going back to the issue of separation versus togetherness, it is a well known saying that 'familiarity breeds contempt' and this is true. Remember that couple with 3 kids we saw sitting across from us at the restaurant in Bangkok on your last night here in April and how they were staring blankly into space looking as miserable together as a couple could possibly be?  We observed them and said we hoped we would never be like that and that we would always take care to not take one another and our love for granted. I'm not sure we have followed this as well as we could have these past two months. But, in any case, we are in the process of building and defining our relationship and figuring out how we will go forward together while respecting each other's differences and individual selves. It is a bumpy road sometimes but we seem to find a way step by step towards a 'we' that we will both be happy with in the end.