5 Simple Lessons to Learn from Alain de Botton’s “On Love”

“That’s all I want in life.”

A good friend of mine sent me the following text as I was arriving to a local cafe to meet her for brunch. She had gotten there a bit early, and detailed the story of how she saw an old couple sitting across from her.

The man was endlessly doting on his wife, setting her chair, cleaning her side of the table, and overall ensuring she didn’t feel the slightest discomfort. Meanwhile, the lady turned and gave my friend an endearing smile, as if to say, “He’s always been like this.”

Don’t we all like to imagine ourselves like that one day — elderly, content, and having worked out how to enjoy life with our beloved to the fullest? The question is, how do we get there? There isn’t one good answer to this question, but there are an eternity’s worth of general guidelines one can follow.

Here are a few from French philosopher Alain de Botton’s bestselling novel, On Love.

Look beyond the words someone uses

“Not to find the right words is paradoxically often the best proof that the right words are meant.”

It’s easy to be swooned by the charming, eloquent words of someone who is trying to win you over. After all, who doesn’t want to feel like the main character in an idealistic Hollywood love story?

But when searching for someone to spend the rest of your days with, it might be well worth your time to lower our standards.

If someone is stumbling over their words just trying to talk to you, it’s a surefire sign that they simply don’t want to say the wrong thing. Societal standards would have you believe that a single mismatched syllable indicates a lack of confidence and is thus unattractive.

In reality, it might just mean someone really cares about you.

Remember love is a two-way street

“I had counted more on loving than being loved. And if I had concentrated largely on the former dynamic, it was perhaps because being loved is always the more complicated of the two emotions, Cupid’s arrow greatly easier to send than to receive.”

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For a successful relationship, it’s of course important to love your partner, but it’s equally important that they love you. This seems a simple truth, but one that generations of ill-fated lovers have been unable to grasp.

The paradox lies in the fact that the more strongly you send love, the more complicated its reception (or lack thereof) becomes. You see every good quality in the other person. You become convinced that they’re not only perfect, but perfect for you.

And the deeper you sink into this delusion, the harder it becomes to accept that your love may be unrequited. But accept it you must. To do so, remind yourself that if it doesn’t go both ways, you’ll never truly be happy.

It’s less about who you are, more about how you treat each other

“I know you and my daughter are fond of one another. I’m no expert on love, but I’ll tell you something. In the end, I’ve found it doesn’t really matter who you marry. If you like them at the beginning, you probably won’t like them at the end. And if you start off hating them, there’s always the chance you’ll end up thinking they’re all right.”

I’ll be frank; I don’t entirely agree with this. There is such a thing as compatibility between two people, and it’s entirely possible to be happy with someone across a lifetime.

That said, I do think this quote brings up a good point. The “perfect match” exists only in your imagination; after a certain threshold, there are bound to be disagreements. Beyond it, there are more important things than compatibility.

Even if there was a moment in time when everything seemed flawless; the nature of existence is that people will grow and change, and you may eventually find yourself looking at a different person from the one you initially knew. It is at this crucial juncture that communication, compromise, forgiveness, patience, and all those other oh-so-elusive human virtues come into play.

In other words, you can’t control who someone is. But you can control how you treat them.

Drop the idea of some heavenly being who never irritates you

“In another Chinese restaurant, I realized that life with other people functions a little like the circular wheel at the center of a table on which dishes have been placed and which can be revolved so that one is faced with shrimp one minute, beef the next. Does loving someone not follow a similar pattern, in which there are regular revolutions in the intensity and nature of one’s feelings?”

This continues the previous point, but goes deeper. Even if you recognize that no individual can match your temperament exactly, you might have convinced yourself that there’s someone out there who’s so incredibly emotionally intelligent — surpassed only by the likes of yourself, of course 🙂 — that you’ll never spend a day in you life arguing.

Yeah, no.

Sometimes, people suck for no reason. By extension, you also suck at times, as does your fantasy partner. You can’t avoid all the stressors and agonies that life will throw your way, and as a result you will also fall victim to the occasional bad temper, stray remark, or unsightly glare.

It doesn’t mean it’s time to go your separate ways. As quickly as that feeling of disgust came, it may disappear, only to be replaced with a profound love and joy. Be patient.

The pain of loss can be unbearable, but it will pass

“There is an Arabic saying that the soul travels at the pace of a camel. While most of our self is led by the strict demands of timetables and diaries, our soul, the seat of the heart, trails nostalgically behind, burdened by the weight of memory. By the time it was finally able to shrug off the crushing weight of her memory, Chloe had nearly killed my camel.

…

The camel became lighter and lighter as it walked through time. It kept shaking memories and photos off its back, scattering them over the desert floor and letting the wind bury them in the sand, and gradually the camel became so light that it could trot and even gallop in its own curious way — until one day, in a small oasis that called itself the present, the exhausted creature finally caught up with the rest of me.”

You’ve heard it a million times: time heals all wounds. I have no desire to suffocate you with that saying for the millionth time. While I do believe it to be true, I also think it doesn’t really help on its own, as it doesn’t really acknowledge what you’re feeling.

So, in the spirit of empathy, I’ll first focus on a different aspect of the quote above.

When you’re trying to get over someone, it can hurt. It can hurt really bad sometimes. And that’s okay — don’t be too hard on yourself, and understand that there is no other way. You can’t run, you can’t hide, and to be honest, you can’t really speed it up much either. You’ve just gotta live your life, and let your camel do its thing.

But if I can promise you one thing, it’s this: it will catch up to you. Take comfort in that.