Pronouncements

I have been reading 'Madame Bovary' recently, which, if you haven't read it, I can thoroughly recommend. There are a few passages in there which are particularly striking (I assume this is also the case in the original French) for the succinct ease with which they deal with profound concepts. I think the passage about language being "a cracked kettle" is fairly famous, but I think the passage that struck me most is as follows: "the denigration of those we love always severs us from them a little. Idols must not be touched; the gilt comes off in our hands." 

I suppose it is possible for this to be seen as an endorsement of unrequited love as the only form of love able to endure, but I'm fairly sure that in its context, Flaubert meant it to apply more broadly to relationships. 

You often hear couples who have been together for many decades say that they never go to bed angry at each other, which is sensible, as the passing of a night by its very nature can make a disagreement seem more entrenched, giving the impression that it is more intractable than perhaps it is. It also means that you spend more time in disagreement with each other - even if for most of that time you are asleep - increasing the overall perception that you spend a lot of time in disagreement. And perception is important, because you have to perceive that something is worth the effort to want to make an effort for it. I'm a firm believer that life's what you make it and I don't mean that in a Tory 'the only reason you haven't succeeded is because you're lazy' way, I mean that much of our perception of our life is defined by how we chose to perceive it. Yeah, I know, but I'm talking about the things that we do to define the opinions that become entrenched in our subconscious. If you constantly refer to your partner as 'the ball and chain', you are going to automatically associate them with being a drag; everything they do or say will appear to inconvenience you and you will resent their presence for no reason other than you have predetermined your resentment. Even without continually applying a degrading epithet to your partner, it is easy to build up negative connotations in a relationship just by thinking "they always..." Everyone has disagreements, it would be weird if people didn't: they are different after all. However, we don't have to conflate our lack of agreement with undesirable traits in our partner. Our partners are not perfect; if we chose to represent that imperfection to ourselves as undesirable, then we are probably destined to be alone. Unfortunately I cannot express that as neatly or succinctly as Flaubert.