It’s natural to imagine that the highest virtue in love would be kindness and, a close
second, politeness. But there is an odd danger lurking here: a relationship where we are
overly polite, where there is not enough directness, where things go wrong not because of a lack
of tenderness or serenity but because of a stifling excess of manners, because there
aren’t enough raised voices, insults, legitimate furies and moments where both partners feel
free to call each other idiots and much worse.
When we hear arguments between lovers, perhaps through a hotel bedroom wall, it is easy to
fear for them and their union.
We have most of us been deeply and rightly sensitized to the horrors of abusive relationships.
But there is, within reason, and we stress within reason with great seriousness, something extremely vital and
redemptive that can unfold within the occasional heated discussion. Living around someone is
bound to be, at points, extremely disappointing. For love to remain vital, we need the freedom
to give this disappointment expression. It seems we cannot love if love is all we are
allowed to do. Many of us have implicitly been taught in childhood that disappointments
are best swallowed quietly. Perhaps a parent was very fragile or they were very volatile,
so that we feared either annihilating them or provoking them unbearably by giving vent
to our more honest feelings. We grew up polite and good but also in danger of feeling inwardly
dead and convinced that no one could witness us as we are and still love us. A certain
kind of politeness is the enemy of love. We cannot love, or be properly in a relationship
that feels alive, and simply lock away too many of our reservations. We need for love
to be first and foremost, real – and this will involve giving expression to all kinds
of more ambivalent feelings. In most arenas of life, mere politeness will do; there should
be little else around friends and colleagues. But love needs something riskier: we have
to be able to say that we hate when we hate – so that later we can properly love when
it’s time to love. This is why, in the interests of the relationship, we might need to tell
the partner that they have ruined our life, that they are selfish and infuriating and
that we have had more than enough – and the partner, far from getting simply offended
(though that has its role too) should take it, and read the explosion for what it is:
a homage to the trust and bond between us. That a red faced accuser would never speak
like this to anyone else on earth should be interpreted as the greatest privilege. They
don’t just hate you, though they do at the moment, they have a lot of hope in you, and
a lot of faith that you love them enough to take their reality – and when it’s blown
over, their love will be as sincere as their anger once was. We should get angry when the
occasion fairly demands it; we, the overly meak and cowed ones, should experience how
good and necessary it feels to dare to let go and vent our annoyance and irritation without
the usual huge (and valuable) inhibitions. We should not be overly scared of the odd
loud argument, we should form our irritations into some beautifully creative insults; it
is not a sign that everything is coming to an end and love has died, it’s a sign that
our relationship still has a lot of kindness, sincerity and tolerance left within it.
Love is a skill you can learn. Our relationships book calmly guides us with calm and charm
through the key issues of relationships to ensure that success in love need not be a matter of luck.