Alain De Botton

We've been there.

We've been there.

We know those types.

Mm-hmm.

But the thing is, the novel is quite influenced by, I never mentioned psychoanalysis directly or only a few times, but, you know, psychoanalysis tells us a fascinating thing about love.

It tells us that when we go into adult love, we are very much recreating some of the emotions associated with childhood love.

It's a basic tenet.

And the dangerous thing is that when we were children, all of us tasted love mixed in with some pretty troubling dynamics.

There's always something, even if your parents were very nice, like there was always something.

Maybe your father was jealous or your mother was depressed or whatever it was.

So we all grow up expecting that all we want from a lover is someone to treat us well.

But we tend to discover, and this makes relationships so complicated, we don't want people just to treat us well.

We want people to feel familiar.

which may mean that they may need to make us suffer in ways that we're kind of used to.

And you know those people that you set up on dates and you say, you know, you two should really get together.

You're very compatible.

And then they get together and they report that actually it doesn't really work.

And they say, oh, the chemistry is not right.

Or they're really nice, but they don't do it for me.

And often what's going on is we're feeling that a person is not going to make us suffer in the way that we need to suffer in order to experience love.