[데브리북] Alain de Botton, The Course of Love (낭만적 연애와 그 후의 일상)

 

헌책방에서 사와서 읽은 책이라 아직도 가지고 있는 책. 

 

 

의도한 건 아닌데 마침 당시 만나던 T와 헤어지는 시기에 읽고서 인생의 다음 단계로 나아가게 만들어 준 알랭 드 보통의 [The Course of Love]. 영문판으로 읽어서 한국어로 나온 책 이름을 몰랐는데 [낭만적 연애와 그 후의 일상]이라니...

 

이 소설은 책 표지의 느낌과는 딱인데 영문 제목과 한국어 제목은 둘다 와닿지가 않는다.  

 

 

 

 

 

알랭 드 보통, 낭만적 연애와 그 후의 일상

 

 

 

 

 

 

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She is curious because she knows, better than most, that there is no one more likely to destroy us than the person we marry.

 

 

 

 

 

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Life on his own had become, he realized then, untenable. He had had enough of solitary walks home at the end of desultory parties; of entire Sundays passed without speaking a word to another human; of holidays spent tagging along with harassed couples whose children left them no energy for conversation; of the knowledge that he occupied no important place in anyone's heart.

 

 

 

 

 

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Spending fifty-two straight Sundays alone may play havoc with a person's prudence. Loneliness can provoke an unhelpful rush and repression of doubt and ambivalence about a potential spouse. The success of any relationship should be determined, not just by how happy a couple are to be together, but by how worried each partner would be about not being in a relationship at all.

 

 

 

 

 

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He is positively drawn to Kirsten because of her troubles. He identifies her as a suitable candidate for marriage because he is instinctively suspicious of people for whom things have always gone well. Around cheerful and sociable others he feels isolated and peculiar. He dislikes carefree types with a vengeance. In the past he has described certain women he has been out on dates with as "boring" when anyone else might more generously and accurately growth and depth, Rabih wants his own sadness to find an echo in his partner's character. He therefore doesn't much mind, initially, that Kirsten is sometimes withdrawn and hard to read, or that she tends to seem aloof and defensive in the extreme after they've had an argument. He entertains a confused wish to help her without, however, understanding that help can be a challenging gift to deliver to those who are most in need of it. He interprets her damaged aspects in the most obvious and most lyrical way: as a chance for him to play a useful role.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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We believe we are seeking happiness in love, but what we are really after is familiarity. We are looking to re-create, within our adult relationships, the very feelings we knew so well in childhood and which were rarely limited to just tenderness and care. The love most of us will have tasted early on came entwined with other, more destructive dynamics: feelings of wanting to help an adult who was out of control, of being deprived of a parent's warmth or scared of his or her anger, or of not feeling secure enough to communicate our trickier wishes. 

How logical, then, that we should as adults find ourselves rejecting certain candidates not because they are wrong but because they are a little too right- in the sense of seeming somehow excessively balanced, mature, understanding, and reliable- given that, in our hearts, such rightness feels foreign and unearnt. We chase after more exciting others, not in the belief that life with them will more harmonious, but out of an unconscious sense that it will be reassuringly familiar in its patterns of frustration.

 

 

 

 

 

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It takes a certain strength to cry, the confidence that one will eventually be able to staunch the tears. She doesn't have the luxury of feeling just a little sad. The danger is that she might fall apart and never know how to put the pieces back together. To prevent the possibility, she cauterized her wounds as best she can, aged seven.

 

 

 

 

 

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The very concept of trying to "teach" a lover things feels patronizing, incongruous, and plain sinister. If we truly loved someone, there could be no talk of wanting him or her to change. Romanticism is clear on this score: true love should involve an acceptance of a partner's whole being. It is this fundamental commitment to benevolence that makes the early months of love so moving. Within the new relationship, our vulnerabilities are treated with generosity. Our shyness, awkwardness, and confusion endear (as they did when we were children) rather than generate sarcasm or complaint; the trickier sides of us are interpreted solely through the filter of compassion. 

From these momonts, a beautiful yet challenging and even reckless conviction develops: that to be properly loved must always mean being endorsed for all that one is.

 

 

 

 

 

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Is there not, wonders Rabih, an infantile idealism in our wish to find everything in one other being - someone who will be simultaneously a best friend, a lover, a co-parent, a co-chauffeur, and a business partner? What a recipe for disappointment and resentment in this notion upon which millions of otherwise perfectly good marriages regularly founder.

 

 

 

 

 

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At the heart of their struggles, there is an issue of trust, a virtue which comes easily to neither of them. They are wounded creatures who had to cope with undue disappointments as children and have consequently grown into powerfully defended adults, awkward about all emotional undress. They are experts in attack strategy and fortress construction; what they are rather less good at, like fighters adjusting badly to civilian life after an armistice, is tolerating the anxieties that come with letting down their guard and admitting to their own fragilities and sorrows. 

 

 

 

 

 

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Pronouncing a lover "perfect" can only be a sign that we have failed to understand them. We can claim to have begun to know someone only when they have substantially disappointed us.

However, the problems aren't theirs alone. Whomever we could meet would be radically imperfect: the stranger on the train, the old school acquaintance, the new friend online... Each of these, too, would be guaranteed to let us has come through unscratched. We were all (necessarily) less than ideally parented: we fight rather than explain, we nag rather than teach, we fret instead of analyzing our worries, we lie and scatter blame where it doesn't belong.

 

반응형

 

 

 

 

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He knows that perfect happiness comes in tiny, incremental units only, perhaps no more than five minutes at a time. This is what one has to take with both hands and cherish.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* 함께 읽으면 좋은 책

 

2023.06.10 - [읽고 배우고 생각하고/밑줄긋기] - [데브리북] 알랭 드 보통, 불안

[데브리북] 알랭 드 보통, 불안