The Joy of Paradox

Why do we do what we do? Seemingly we long for something different as we continue to invest in what we have? As soon as we get something different, our longing gets displaced to a new goal, a new difference, a new not-what-we-have.  These issues play out especially dramatically in the realm of romance and life partnerdom, and on that heady subject Adam Phllips, a British psyschoanalyst, Freud expert, and writer teases us with insights, prods, tickles, insults, and caresses. 

Monogamy is a short monograph comprised of 121 aphorisms or short meditations.  Some are only a couple of sentences, a few as long as two pages.  They remind us that there are no simple solutions, that contradictions abound, and that we can savor those contradictions at the same time that they baffle us.  Better to be amused and intrigued at our complex human condition than to be defeated by the entanglements, or depressed by the failure to find ultimate solutions.

Some samples:

“We work hard to keep certain versions of ourselves in other people’s minds; and, of course the less appealing ones out of their minds. And yet everyone we meet invents us, whether we like it or not. Indeed nothing convinces us more of the existence of other people, of just how different they are from us, than what they can make of what we say to them. Our stories often become unrecognizable as they go from mouth to mouth.

Being misrepresented is simply being presented with a version of ourselves – an invention – that we cannot agree with. But we are daunted by other people making us up, by the number of people we seem to be. We become frantic trying to keep the numbers down, trying to keep the true story of who we really are in circulation. This, perhaps more than anything else, drives us into the arms of one special partner. Monogamy is a way of getting the versions of ourselves down to a minimum. And, of course, a way of convincing ourselves that some versions are truer than others – that some are special.”

“It is not a question of what we belive, but that we believe at all. It is not a question of who we are faithful to, but that we are faithful.

Fidelity shouldn’t always be taken personally.”

“At its best monogamy may be the wish to find someone to die with; at its worst it is a cure for the terrors of aliveness. They are easily confused.”

“If sex brought us in to the family, it is also what breaks us out of the family. In other words, people leave home when what they have got to hide – their sexuality – either has to be hidden somewhere else, or when it is best shown somewhere else.

If you’ve got nothing to hide you’ve got nowhere to go. Which is one of the reasons why couples sometimes want to be totally honest with each other.”

“We can never be quite sure whether we are competing for something that doesn’t exist, or winning a competition in which no one else is competing. This is why in marriage we are never quite sure who the joke is on. Nothing defeats us like success. It is always more baffling – more essentially ironic—than failure.”

“It is often easier to get other people to do what one wants than to get oneself to. So it’s often the person in the couple who isn’t having the affair that wants to, and the one that is that is bitterly unhappy.

We delegate more in our erotic lives than anywhere else. Someone has to do the dirty work.”

“The compulsive monogamist is like the compulsive libertine. For both of them something is too extravagant. For both of them there is a catastrophe to be averted. Monogamists are terrorized by their promiscuous wishes, libertines by their dependence. It is all a question of which catastrophe one prefers.”

“More has been written about how relationships don’t work, than about how they do. We have virtually no language, other than banality, to describe the couple who have been happy together for a long time. We would like them to have a secret, we would like them to have something they could give us. Or that we could give them, other than our suspicion.

There is nothing more terrorizing than the possibility that nothing is hidden. There’s nothing more scandalous than a happy marriage.”

“We begin to feel safe – a litte uneasy, perhaps, but safe – when a new relationship begins to change into a familiar one. When we have settled into our routines, when all the false notes and small misunderstandings have become part of a larger understanding that we call our life together. We don’t need to think about it – or think about it like this – we just enjoy each other’s company. We cannot imagine ourselves without each other. And when we cannot imagine ourselves without each other, we are no longer together.”

“We are never misunderstood, we are just sometimes understood in ways we don’t like. We are never unfaithful, we are just sometimes faithful in ways we don’t like.”

Good stuff.  I need to look at his other books.