A week or so ago, someone posted on Facebook that they'd never had the kind of love that the character has in After Life (the Ricky Gervais series), and that they really wanted that kind of consuming love. It was a really heartbreaking post to read, but as I hadn't watched the second series yet, I said nothing. I have since watched it, and went back to respond but it's vanished, so I'm writing my thoughts here.
Firstly, in After Life, the wife has died. The husband is grieving. So the husband is focused on all the good things about her that he loved and missed. In the second season, there are hints that he wasn't the most attentive husband. He tells how he wouldn't say I love you back at the end of a phone call if other people were around, and how she'd be busy in the kitchen and he would get annoyed if he had to help and wouldn't dance with her at parties and so on. These are all fairly normal things, and are part of a long life together where we take opportunity for granted (we think our lives together will last forever, so that opportunity to say I love you on the phone won't be our last opportunity to say it). The show does give us glimpses that the husband is idolising his wife, but that perhaps it wasn't the most perfect relationship in real life, in no small part because of him and how casually he loved her at the time. All of which I would say is actually pretty normal. (Maybe not right, but normal).
Secondly, there is this brilliant talk by Alain De Botton on what shapes our idea of romantic love and marriage, and what it actually should be. It is part of the Opera House's Digital Season (which if you haven't checked out, it's worth doing - I've been making up for my lack of weekly visits by 'catching up' online). You can run it in the background while you're doing something else, so while it's an hour, it doesn't need to take up any time.
The bottom line is, with a romanticised idea of love, there's no room for arguing about towels. However, life is all those things, and so is love. It's utilitarian as well as being swept off your feet and a driving desire. It has to be.
While talking about lockdown, we were talking how lonely some people were, and my husband said "I've never felt that. I've always had you." He meant it in the sense that there was always someone to off load stress to, and someone to play Banangrams with when bored, and someone whose presence shone approval, rather than someone actually being there. There are plenty of people lonely in their marriage. The pragmatism of the statement was an acknowledgement of 20 plus years of marriage and friendship, rather than an indication of a romanticised 'great love'. Love is the little day to day things added up, not just the grand romantic gestures.
Lastly, just remember you forget. When you first got together you probably had that all-consuming love and desire that floods through many new relationships. But time dilutes its power and other glue emerges.
I think De Botton gives some very good advice at the end of the talk to a lady who asks about bringing some more romance back into her long marriage. 'Act as if tonight is your last'. Say that I love you in the phone call, plan something special for no reason. Do that thing you used to do but stopped because of kids, school, work or the million other aspects of life that got in the way.
This is a long post for a person who I hope reads it. I don't know if she will or how to find her. My advice, is don't throw away a good thing for an ideal that is impractical and just shaped by the Romantic Poets (this is discussed at length by De Botton in the talk). We are influenced in our ideas on love by movies and shows that do not show arguments over towels because it's too boring to watch. But those arguments about towels* happen all the same.
Linking with #Blogtober21
*De Botton uses the towels example. I don't have a nutty obsession with towels or a passive agressive issue with towels - at least not with my husband. The kids on the other hand....but that's another post.
